An Identity

If one day, two ladies approach you at a hospital and each one tells you they are a doctor while the other is not, I’m sure you wouldn’t immediately know which person to believe. A person’s profession isn’t usually written on the forehead; at least they would have some acceptable form of identification. So I imagine you would ask to see some identification, or ask someone else you believed was a staff of the hospital.

Now, if one of the ladies were to present an ID card bearing her picture, and stating she was a doctor, you would be inclined to accept what she was saying, especially if the other person could not produce a similar ID card or tag.

Now, let’s say you present your complaint to the first lady with the ID card, and she is unable to offer medical aid, whereas the second lady without identification offers you medical advice and a prescription, I think you would be inclined to believe she was the doctor because she had acted like one, despite the lack of identification. Your confusion would be alleviated significantly if a friend you knew came and identified her as a doctor who had attended to her before.

The point of this whole literary rigmarole is that sometimes a name or title, even if it is in print, doesn’t translate to who a person is.

Some people are called Christians because they were born to Christian parents, while some, like the early church, earned the name after acting like Christ Himself¹.

God is good, not because He has a name tag that says ‘good’, but because He has earned it. He does good things, and never evil.

Anyone who associates with Him cannot continue to do evil, because two people cannot walk together unless they agree.

We must get beyond just bearing names to deserving them. If you are called a Christian, you have an obligation to the One whose name you bear, to do good. As the bible says, the person who does good is of God, but anyone who does not do good does not even know God.²

Be the reason why someone who hasn’t met God will say after meeting you, “God is good.”

¹ Acts 11:26

² 3Jn 1:11