See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
1 John 3:1, NIV
As I pulled into the small parking lot beside the metal and concrete building, images of my childhood came dancing back across my mind’s eye. Memories of riding into this lot with my dad when I was just a child, memories of meeting the nice old man who ran this shop, memories of all the cool tools and machines inside - all these and more flooded my consciousness and set me into a daydream for a moment.
I was quickly awakened from my sweet nostalgic trance by the barking, growling, snarling oversized akita pounding his dinner-plate sized paws against my truck door. The only thing standing between me and my childhood memories inside that fabrication shop was a mouthful of teeth and the angry meat behind them. I sat in the truck, more thankful than ever for the metal and glass that separated my flesh from this beast’s notions of a snack, utterly shocked by the situation. It wasn’t the on-duty guard dog at this shop that had me rattled, but that I knew the face I’d find behind the bay doors would not be the same as the last time I’d visited.
After what seemed like years, more likely only moments, a gruff looking man emerged from the shop and called off the dog, who slinked back into the shop as if to concede that his fun was finally over. I carefully got out of my truck and began to walk toward the man. “Who are you?” he shouted across the lot, “and what are you here for?”
It seemed as if my troubles were only beginning.
***
As the early church began to grow in numbers, it did so quite cautiously. Publicly proclaiming Jesus’ name, let alone a faith in that name, would have been a punishable offence in the Roman empire, and would have certainly led Jewish leaders to persecute the offender even to the point of death. Fear and anxiety would have weighed heavily on the early disciples, yet something more important than fear drove them to spread the Good News faithfully, albeit carefully, throughout the world. The disciple John, the disciple ‘who Jesus loved,’ writes in his first letter to the Church, “The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him,” (1 John 3:1, NIV). John is getting to the heart of the persecution, rejection, and fear that is assailing him and his fellow disciples in this early church age: identity. Questions arise throughout the region: Who are these people? Why do they persist in promoting a faith in a ‘criminal’ who was executed?
Questions can lead to danger, but they can also create openings for the light of Christ to get through.
***
“I’m John Dull,” I shouted back. “I came to see if you’d be able to weld some gate hinges on this old trailer.”
The gruff character stopped where he stood, still twenty feet away, and stared hard at me. I could hear the echoes of the dog’s angry growls through the metal bay doors of the shop. Surely there was another fabrication shop in the county I could have patronized, and most likely would have been more warmly welcomed. Yet, I chose this one because of my childhood memories, and I would have to rely on those connections to see me through this strange situation I’d found myself in.
“You must be Denny’s son,” I continued. “I’m sorry to hear he passed. Sorry for your loss. When I was a kid, my dad would bring me out here when he needed to get something welded. I was hoping you might still be able to help a guy out, since our fathers were old friends.”
The gruff face cracked a smile, then a softer look, and then the slightest wetness in the corner of the man’s eyes shone the light of his soul out into the world for a moment. “Anything for an old friend of my dad,” he said with a grin. As I followed him into the shop to talk details, and reminisce about the old days, the once angry beast curled up sweetly on a bed in the corner. He looked at me as if to say, “Any friend of my dad is a friend of mine.”
***
How do you identify yourself? Today’s world is all too concerned with the pronouns you prefer, the awards you’ve won, the number of ‘likes’ on your last social media post. The problem with these markers is, however close you think they get to defining the core of who you are, they are very poor means of actually identifying you. You see, as much as these things and other human concerns say about who we are to one another, they are not unique. There is nothing unique about your name, your gender, your status in society. All of these traits are repeatable and shared by thousands, millions of other people across the wide world. We seek ways to distinguish ourselves from others and only end up being one more member of the endless society of nondescript individuals. Individuality may be a gift, but it is not an identity.
Whose are you? Not “who,” but “whose?” Your identity is better defined not by what you are, or think you are, but by whose you are. We are all products of something - actually, many things. You are someone’s friend. You are someone’s partner. You are someone’s neighbor. You are someone’s child.
It’s been a true blessing, in fact sometimes a matter of saving my hide, to be able to identify myself as my father’s son. It is even more of a blessing to know the truest definition of my identity is a child of God. Never forget whose you are. Behave like you represent your God and Father every day. You’ll never be mistaken for a stranger again.
J.M.D.
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
1 John 3: 2-3, NIV