Who Are You?

I remember way back in the 80s watching a comedy titled “Walk Like a Man”. The story involved a boy called Bobo who was pushed off a sled by his older brother leaving him to die in the wintry wilderness of Alaska where their father had gone on a search for gold and fortune. 20 years later, Bobo was found by a Biologist. He had been raised by wolves and his behavior was like that of the wolves; he greeted people by licking their faces, barked, growled and ran on all fours. His sense of identity had been affected by his time with the wolves. He did not recognize that he was a human being, he apparently thought he was a wolf. He had to be trained to behave more like a person than a canine. He had to go through a process to regain an awareness of who he truly was. He had to recapture the sense of his true identity.

Identity is defined as who a person is or in some cases the way someone views himself. Along with acceptance, security and purpose, identity is a basic human psychological need. Identity developed from childhood into adulthood guides the future construction of adulthood. The choices we make are usually determined by our sense of identity. People with unhealthy identity usually have a low self-esteem, they are unable to withstand external pressures and are easily manipulated. Such is the importance of identity and so I ask the question: Who Are You?

Millions of Jewish prisoners were stripped of their personal identification in the Nazi camps. All their possessions were taken away and they received new clothes with only personal identification numbers sewn into them by which they would be known while in the camp. After having received his own number, Alexander Donat wrote in his memoir Surviving Slave Labor at Majdanek, “from that moment I ceased to be a man, a human being; instead I became camp inmate 7,115”¹. If they were asked who they were, they were expected to respond by reciting their personal identification numbers. But you see those numbers were not their real identities.  

While our personal experiences may not be exactly as harrowing as what happened to the Jews in those camps, the devil in different situations and circumstances we go through in life continually makes us question our identity. His aim is to confuse us and get us to the point of not recognizing our real identity. Looking through Scriptures, I have come to realize that this is a method the devil has always used in derailing God’s people from being at the maximum potential God calls them to be. In the biblical accounts of the temptation of Eve and even our Lord Jesus recorded in Genesis 3 and Matthew 4 respectively, a key aspect the devil attacked was their sense of identity. In Eve’s case, the serpent said to her:

“God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.” Genesis 3:5 New Living Translation

But you see, we know from Genesis 1:26 & 27 that Adam and Eve were already created in God’s image and likeness. So, the devil was amongst other things, attacking Eve’s sense of identity in his subtle temptation. The serpent’s rhetoric may not have been so tempting if Eve had been well grounded in that knowledge. 

Similarly, when the devil tempted our Lord Jesus, he said to Him:

“…If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread” Matthew 4:3 New Living Translation.

Unlike Eve, our Lord Jesus was firmly grounded in His identity. In Luke 2:41-50 we read an account of an event in which at the age of 12, He was already displaying a clear understanding and awareness of His real identity. He did not need to prove to either the devil or even Himself that He was the Son of God, so the devil’s rhetoric was not effective.

The late Dr. Myles Munroe related in one of his books The Spirit of Leadership, a story he was told by a Zimbabwean Village Chief that lucidly illustrates the importance of having the right sense of identity. An old shepherd found a lone shivering cub one day while tending to his flock of sheep. He took the cub home and raised him among his sheep. The lion cub grew with the sheep and became a part of the herd. They accepted him as one of their own, and he acted like one of them. After a while, the little cub had become an adolescent lion, but he acted, sounded, responded, and behaved just like one of the sheep. He had lost himself and become one of them. From here on I will tell the story exactly as Dr. Myles Munroe told it:

“One hot day, four years later, the shepherd sat on a rock, taking refuge in the slight shade of a leafless tree. He watched over his flock as they waded into the quiet, flowing water of a river to drink. The lion who thought he was a sheep followed them in to the water to drink. Suddenly, just across the river, there appeared out of the thick jungle bush a large beast that the lion cub had never seen before. The sheep panicked and, as if under the spell of some survival instinct, leaped out of the water and dashed toward the direction of the farm. They never stopped until they were all safely huddled behind the fence of the pen. 

Strangely, the lion cub, who was now a grown lion, was also huddled with them, stricken with fear. While the flock scrambled for the safety of the farm, the beast made a sound that seemed to shake the forest. When he lifted his head above the tall grass, the shepherd could see that he held in his blood-drenched mouth the lifeless body of a lamb from the flock. The man knew that danger had returned to his part of the forest.

Seven days passed without further incident, and then, while the flock grazed, the young lion went down to the river to drink. As he bent over the water, he suddenly panicked and ran wildly toward the farmhouse for safety. The sheep did not run and wondered why he had, while the lion wondered why the sheep had not run since he had seen the beast again. After a while, the young lion went slowly back to the flock and then to the water to drink again. Once more, he saw the beast and froze in panic. It was his own reflection in the water.

While he tried to understand what he was seeing, suddenly, the beast appeared out of the jungle again. The flock dashed with breakneck speed toward the farmhouse, but before the young lion could move, the beast stepped in the water toward him and made that deafening sound that filled the forest. For a moment, the young lion felt that his life was about to end. He realized that he saw not just one beast, but two—one in the water and one before him.

His head was spinning with confusion as the beast came within ten feet of him and growled at him face-to-face with frightening power in a way that seemed to say to him, “Try it, and come and follow me.” As fear gripped the young lion, he decided to try to appease the beast and make the same sound. However, the only noise that came from his gaping jaws was the sound of a sheep. The beast responded with an even louder burst that seemed to say, “Try it again.” After seven or eight attempts, the young lion suddenly heard himself make the same sound as the beast. He also felt stirrings in his body and feelings that he had never known before. It was as if he was experiencing a total transformation in mind, body, and spirit.

Suddenly, there stood in the river of life two beasts growling at and to each other. Then the shepherd saw something he would never forget. As the beastly sounds filled the forest for miles around, the big beast stopped, turned his back on the young lion, and started toward the forest. Then he paused and looked at the young lion one more time and growled, as if to say, “Are you coming?” The young lion knew what the gesture meant and suddenly realized that his day of decision had arrived—the day he would have to choose whether to continue to live life as a sheep or to be the self he had just discovered. He knew that, to become his true self, he would have to give up the safe, secure, predictable, and simple life of the farm and enter the frightening, wild, untamed, unpredictable, dangerous life of the jungle. It was a day to become true to himself and leave the false image of another life behind. It was an invitation to a “sheep” to become the king of the jungle. Most importantly, it was an invitation for the body of a lion to possess the spirit of a lion.

After looking back and forth at the farm and the jungle a few times, the young lion turned his back on the farm and the sheep with whom he had lived for years, and he followed the beast into the forest to become who he always had been—a lion king.”²

Who are you? Who do you think you are? Have you bought into the devil’s dangerous deceptions or listened to his artfully spun rhetoric? Or are you firmly rooted in the awareness of your true identity?

To be continued…

Notes:

1.            Niewyk, Donald L. The Holocaust. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

2.            Munroe, Myles. The Spirit Of Leadership: Cultivating The Attitudes That Influence Human Action. Whitaker House, 2005