When Self-Expression Becomes Our Identity
On June 18, Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Jake Warner spoke at a press conference about our client Jack Phillips’s case before the Colorado Supreme Court. After nearly twelve years in litigation, Jack is facing yet another lawsuit for declining to create a custom cake celebrating an attorney’s “gender transition” from male to female.
“Jack serves everyone, including those who identify as LGBT. Whether he creates a custom cake always depends on what the cake will express, not who requests it,” Jake said. “Jack does not create custom cakes celebrating Halloween or violence, cakes with anti-American themes, cakes that denigrate people, and custom cakes expressing messages that violate his religious beliefs.”
And for over a decade now, activists and government officials have misused Colorado law to threaten and punish Jack because of his beliefs.
Jack is far from our only client to be thrown into years of litigation for the right to exercise his free speech and religious freedom rights. Barronelle Stutzman, a floral artist from Washington state, experienced similar opposition when she declined to create custom arrangements for a same-sex wedding because of her faith.
Jack and Barronelle were publicly denigrated by the media as being hateful and discriminatory and received a litany of threats and harassment as a result.
But the accusations thrown their way couldn’t have been further from the truth. When Jack was initially asked to create a custom cake that would celebrate a same-sex wedding, he told the couple he’d be happy to sell them any item in his shop or create for them a custom cake with messages he’d create for other customers. And in Barronelle’s case, the customer asking for a custom floral arrangement to celebrate his same-sex wedding was a longtime friend of hers. “That was a real struggle, to decide what to do with that,” Barronelle said of her decision. “As much as I love Rob, I just couldn’t be a part of that.”
For people like Jack and Barronelle, their customers’ identity is not the issue; it’s conveying a lie about marriage and gender. If “identity” were the problem, they wouldn’t hire or serve anyone who identifies as LGBT. But the opposite is true: Barronelle has hired LGBT-identifying employees. And she and Jack serve everyone. They decide what art to create based on what it will express, not who requests it.
Jack and Barronelle love others by serving all people and expressing the truth. In the situations mentioned above, they were simply practicing their First Amendment right to decline to say something that went against their consciences.
But for many who believe that religious freedom is a cover for discrimination, therein lies the rub. Because according to the spirit of the age, Jack’s inability to express a certain message—and even the fact that a certain message goes against his conscience—is a denial of the customer’s very personhood.
Jack and Barronelle’s actions are seen as discriminatory because of an issue our nation has been wrestling with for decades: identity.
According to many opponents of freedom, identity is rooted in sexuality and, more importantly, the expression of that sexuality.
Carl Trueman, a professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College, calls this expressive individualism, a term first coined by American scholar Robert Bellah.
“Expressive individualism,” writes Bellah, “holds that each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized.”
So a culture that has adopted expressive individualism believes one’s true self is one’s inner, psychological self. What one feels is right is right by them, and in order to live authentically, we must express ourselves in tandem with our inner feelings and thought life. The internet is ridden with articles on the best steps to take to discover your true self, and how to live and speak your truth.
And although this language of expressive individualism seems to be in the very water we drink today, it’s not an idea that’s unique to our times. In fact, its roots begin in the writings of Rousseau, Marx, Freud, and others, as Trueman also details in his book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.
If our identities are so bound up in and defined by our own, personally constructed sense of self and our desires, it follows that if someone denies our expression of our “true” selves, we have been personally attacked and our right to pursue happiness impeded.
But this humanist philosophy is flawed to the core—an old lie dressed in new garb.
It is a philosophy that denies the doctrine of the Fall and the righteousness of Christ.
Since Adam disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, every man after him was born into sin. By our very natures, our hearts and desires are sinful—and we are in desperate need of a Savior to reconcile us to our Creator. While the world tells us to believe in ourselves, listen to our hearts, and discover our true selves, Jesus tells us to believe in Him, follow Him, and deny ourselves.
When Jack Phillips sees his customers, he sees people made in the image of God. That’s the most foundational aspect of our identities, not our expression of our inner lives or our ever-changing feelings. Declining to create custom cakes expressing certain ideas does not come from disdain for the person requesting the cake.
It comes from a love of God and a love of God’s law.
Jack emphasized this when he touched on why he refuses to cede his convictions—even when other Christians encourage him to. “They say something like, ‘Why don't you just make the cake? Jesus would make the cake.’ They don’t seem to understand how devastating sin is—that we can’t just take it lightly and participate in it. He says to run from it (1 Corinthians 6:8).”
“I’m just a regular guy, and now [God has] shown me that He’s sovereign over everything. But am I willing to be above whatever I have to face here, for this God that I serve? And the best part is … Yes, I am.”
Neither Jack nor any other American should be forced to express something they don’t believe. And Jack’s stand for freedom in court is not a stand for his right to speak his truth—rather it’s a stand to live according to God’s truth. So, how are we to respond in the face of continued opposition?
As Christians, we’re called to pray that those who persecute God’s church might find everlasting life in Christ alone—apart from themselves. And we’re also called to bear witness to the greatest mystery—that Christ the Son of God gave Himself up for us so that our true identities may be hidden with Christ in God.
