The 2002 film Catch Me If You Can was based on the true-life story of teenager Frank Abagnale, who, in the 1960s, spent five years impersonating an airline pilot, a lawyer and a doctor.
Abagnale’s deceptive exploits began at age 16 after he attended a Family Court hearing with his parents and discovered that they were getting a divorce. The judge explained to him that he would have to decide which parent he was going to live with.
Abagnale ran from the court in tears and his counterfeit lifestyle began. He didn’t see his mother for the next seven years and he never saw his father again. Believing that everything about his life had been a façade, he went about creating a new one, or rather, several of them.
In a recent interview Abagnale made an insightful observation into the human condition. When asked why there was such an overwhelming interest in his fraudulent lifestyle, he simply answered, “Because everybody would like to be someone else”.
I was reminded of Frank Abagnale at a retreat I attended during the celebration of Christ the King. One of the speakers asked the audience how many of us believed that we were the sons and daughters of a King. I wasn’t the only one who failed to raise their hand. The reluctant response, she believed, was because most of us were victims of identity theft – and she is right. We have forsaken our true identity in Christ by allowing the world to determine our worth.
However, if we profess to be Christians, then it is imperative that we believe what Scripture tells us – “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1). In fact Scripture is even more specific, describing us as “heirs” and a “royal priesthood”. Yet how many Christians believe this and are living it out in their daily lives?
Too many have allowed their true spiritual identity to be buried under a cloak of lies and ignorance. Too many have become entrapped by those negative words, attitudes and acts that were directed toward them in their childhood. And too many have failed to recognise their true identity because the reality of who they are in Christ was never acknowledged or nurtured.
This is why Abagnale’s observation resonates so profoundly. The reason why people are not content with who they are is because they have never known their real identity, and they have inevitably become dissatisfied with the false one that has replaced it. They have built their lives on a fraudulent foundation and this has prevented them from recognising who God created them to be.
It is understandable why those who have no belief in God would be disillusioned with their perceived identity, because they have no choice but to measure themselves by the transitory standards that society dictates. That is why there is a multi-billion dollar industry that thrives on physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual makeovers – because people have become entangled in a futile cycle of redesigning the masks they are wearing.
However, the good news for Christians is that we do not have to allow society to gauge our worth. Our value as a person can never be measured by what we earn, what we look like, what we do, what others think of us or even by what we think of ourselves. While these factors may, more often than not, camouflage our true identity in Christ, they can in no way change it.
But it is up to us to make a choice. We can either accept the counterfeit identity that we have built on the shifting sands of this world or we can choose our true identity, which is proclaimed in Scripture and built on the rock of faith – that we are the sons and daughters of a King who has already conquered this world.