A Question of Identity

I met Sein Myint in a refugee camp, the only home he has ever known. He doesn’t remember much of his childhood except that he was born in a remote village in Burma. When he was still a small child, the soldiers came to his village and burnt the place down. They needed the land as the village stood in the way of a gas pipeline that was going all the way to India.

When the soldiers had finished, they had lost all their belongings. With just the clothes on their back, the family fled into neighboring Thailand since when he has been living a tenuous existence as in the eyes of the world, without any papers or documents, he does not legally exist. His Burmese birth certificate was burnt by the soldiers and though Thailand allowed him and many others like him to live in enclosed refugee camps, they did not issue him any papers or identity card.

Sein Myint’s loss of identity and lack of papers is more than symbolic. When he entered Thailand, he was a small boy and was enrolled in a minimalist school in the refugee camp that provided education until the 10^th grade. With little access to books and other tuition, Sein Myint nevertheless passed his examinations. But he does not have a pass certificate as the certificate requires a name and place of birth to be entered and the refugees do not have papers to prove that their names are what they say they are and where they born. They can not prove that they are Burmese citizens and they obviously are not Thai subjects. Without a high school certificate, there are no hopes of any further education if he could at all get out of the camps legally which he cant. Which means that after all this education, he can do stray menial jobs or clerical work at the camps.

Jesus had a clear understanding of his identity. When his mother reproached him saying, "Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you." He replied, "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?" He did not dispute the authority or responsibility of his earthly parents, but he clearly saw and stated his identity based on his unique relationship to his heavenly Father. He would continue to be a part of his earthly family, and he would identify himself fully with the people of God, but first and foremost he knew God to be his Father, and God's house to be his home. His earthly life and growth flowed out of this identity.

We also must come to a secure sense of identity as a child of God in order to grow up like Jesus. The Lord Jesus came to make this possible for you and for me. If we put our trust in Christ who died to take away our sins and rose again, he gives us the right to become children of God. This is where the journey to grow up in God's way begins. Knowing ourselves as God's child allows me to grow up like Jesus and become God's man.

A child of God is not merely a person who is forgiven and gets to go to heaven. A Christian, in his or her deepest identity is a saint, a child born of God, a child of light, a citizen of heaven. Being a Christian is not getting something; it is a matter of being someone. Being born into God's family, like being born into a human family is becoming someone who was not there before. Christians, hear what God says about our identity.

The question of identity is always an important one but perhaps no where more so than in the case of people who are stateless – those who are in desperate need of papers of some kind to prove who they are, what there name is and where they belong to – the most elemental of all. It is an eye opener to sit and meet with people like Sein Myint- flesh and blood humans like you and me and realize that in the systems and databases of this world they simply do not exist – they have never been born, never went to school, never worked and in short did none of the things that define the life and existence of almost all of us.

As Christians, we know that out final destination and identity lies in the ramparts of heaven. But like the people of God in the Old Testament who struggled long and hard for a Promised Land, we who follow Him today are also called to do both – invite the displaced and the stateless to find their identity in Christ and gain a citizenship in heaven and also at the same time look out for our friends like Sein Myint, stateless and marginalized people also have a place and an identity to call their own while on earth.