Reputation and Identity

“Who do men say I am?”  Regardless of ones belief, the Gospels have some great stories, and some great situations to climb into to get to know ourselves.  A pair of questions occurs in one of them.  Jesus is starting to get some “traction” in his work; people are starting to talk about him.  He’s sitting with his friends, those who hang with him, follow him.  And he tosses this question up.  “Who do men say I am?”  Did even this wise preacher and healer stop to consider what others thought of him, strangers, adversaries perhaps?  The responses from his friends to that first question varied.  Some people thought he was one thing, and some though another.  Perhaps he was, to them, the fulfillment of their own dreams; they made him who they wanted him to be.

His second question was posed to one of his friends, Peter: “Who do you say that I am?”  Does his friend know the real him?  Is he looking, in Peter’s response, for information or affirmation, for a clue to the identity that he wonders about or affirmation of the self that he knows?

How many of us have heard, particularly in our childhood and adolescence, “Just who do you think you are?”  We will probably recall that the question was asked rhetorically.  The speaker was suggesting to us that we were not who we thought we were.  Like many rhetorical questions, these were lost opportunities, times when both the person posing the question and the person to whom it is posed could learn something.

Who are we to strangers?  How similar is that to who we are with friends?  And who are we when we are all alone?  If we answer all three of these questions, how different would the answers be?  I’ve always admired people who are consistent, who act the same with everyone, whose public face is the same as their private one.  Perhaps the word “authentic” is appropriate, someone who is as (s)he was written to be, who is consistent in character.  We know where they stand, and this lets us orient ourselves, know where we stand, who we are.  On the other hand, we use the word “chameleon” to describe those who have no such consistency, taking whatever color they happen to be standing on, camouflaging themselves.  When do we change our colors?  Why?  Other animals that don’t consider themselves created in the image of God (or do they?) change colors for two reasons.  One is for protection, to appear less to predators.  The other is display, to appear more visible to suitors. 

I don’t know that we ever “get it”, if we ever really know who we are.  Maybe it is foolish to even think about identity independent of others.  Perhaps we are who we are because of who we are with, because of who they need us to be.  Do we look in the mirror to discover ourselves, or into the eyes of friends, or of strangers?  I’m haunted by the fresh memory of our granddaughter who, for a year or so, couldn’t keep her eyes from her reflection, in mirrors, in windows.  I think she came to learn something, to come to some sense of identity, to rest in her own skin.  Now she joins us in finding ways to be authentic and open in a world with others, others who look into mirrors and into our eyes to discover or remember who they are.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.