Identity Confusion

I’m usually minding my own business being a good citizen when bad things happen to me.

Like the other day – I needed orange juice. OJ is a staple in my fridge. I get Tropicana with some pulp. Can’t drink any other kind.

So I go to the Jewel, get my item, and choose the self check out line. In and out. No problem. Right?

Um, wrong! At the last lucky second I remember that I also need stamps. I haven’t checked out yet, and I notice that I’m serendipitously positioned right next to the self checkout cashier lady. What luck, I think to myself. I have one simple question for her. I need just one simple answer. Yes. Or No.

Instead, she huffs, and she puffs, and she almost blows the house down. And says that yes, she could get me a book of stamps. I’m a little taken aback by her response. She hadn’t seemed busy when I had interrupted her.

I decide to be a peace maker and keep my lips shut. It takes some effort, because everything in me is yelling for me to yell at this woman. But I count to 10 (ok, it was really 20), and get my emotions under control. I wait pleasantly for her to get the stamps when suddenly another woman on my other side asks my “helper” a question.

I can’t believe my eyes. The cashier almost had a melt down. I’d never seen anything like it.

So now my first thought is this: Do I know this woman from church? Does she recognize me as the women’s ministry director at my church? I stick my face in her face for a second and get nothing. Safe. And then I notice something else.

Her name tag says this: Assistant service manager.

Wait….did I read this correctly? This gal is a service manager? The ante suddenly goes up. My ire quickly goes from 1 to 10 in a millisecond.

“You’re the service manager?” I asked.

“No…I’m the assistant service manager” she responds.

Silence. I say nothing for a while. I’m blown away. My quick trip to the grocery store has turned into a laboratory of sort. I’m studying a species I barely recognize.

She catches my eyes. “What?” she adds. “Do you think I’m not nice enough?”

Now how do you answer a question like that?

By some miracle I take the high road and end up leaving the store without turning the incident into a full blown scene. Then I got to thinking. This woman simply doesn’t know who she is. Her name tag says she’s a service manager but she thinks and acts like a linebacker.

I often find Christians suffer from this same disease. They don’t know who they are. They have an identity crisis. The name badge says “Christian”, but the Christ like attitude is forgotten somewhere in the back of the closet.

But sooner or later, the Christian will get busted for it.

What about you? What’s your identity shaping up to be like?

Or you can pick the easy way out: act like who you are. It’ll save you a whole lot of face later.

Remember how God describes it in Galatians 2:20

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

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