mistaken identity

There’s a lot of talk lately about identity as part of faith. Of course our core identity is as redeemed image-bearers of God, but as we try to live that out we wrestle increasingly with the labels we’ve worn for years, labels of denomination and race, things like evangelical and Dutch Calvinist.

This morning I read in Acts 14 of the struggles Paul had in Lystra with his own identity. All he wanted was to be seen as a true servant of God. But first, he was mistaken for a god; verse 13 says, “The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought bulls and wreaths to the city gates because he and the crowd wanted to offer sacrifices to them.”

Paul was pretty upset about that and managed to convince them not to offer those sacrifices, but then an even worse mistake was made: traditional Jews identified him as a heretic and rabble-rouser. That’s in verse 19: “Then some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowd over. They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead.”

Non-Christians, it seems, can’t accept the true identity we have in Christ, probably because it would involve accepting Christ. So just as they did with Paul, they try to explain what they see us do in the context of what they believe about the world. Sometimes when they do this, they come to some pretty wild conclusions.

That’s why we’re called superstitious rubes and intolerant bigots. It’s why we’re labeled anti-science. It’s why people believe we’re hateful and judgmental. They think all those things about us because they can’t accept the alternative. 

In order to see us as we are, as loving servants who only want salvation for everyone, they have to accept that Jesus is who he says he is and did what the Bible says he did. But if they accept that, they have to abandon whatever world view they’re living by now.

It seems likely that true disciples of Jesus will always be victims of mistaken identity. Fortunately, we’re not actually defined by what people think of us.