The Oldest Question in the Universe

Jesus and his disciples went into the villages near Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" – Mark 8:27

One of the oldest questions in the universe is "Who am I?" In a way, this is the central question the universe asks of itself. You see, all of the heavy elements in our bodies were created deep within the heart of stars, millions of light years away from us. When those stars exploded, these elements traveled across the universe to the earth. It was the dust out of which God formed humanity. As my dad once told me, "You are very intentionally made. The God who hung the stars had to shake them in order for you to be." We are intimately connected to the universe that surrounds us.

"Who am I?" is the first place where Scripture and Doctor Who collide. In this chapter we will ponder how God's Word and the words of the Doctor help us understand the beauty of God's creation and our role within it.

One of the most interesting things about Doctor Who is that twelve different actors have portrayed the Time Lord from Gallifrey, and the audience buys the fact that all twelve actors are the same person. Why does the audience accept that twelve different personalities all share the same identity? It's not so hard to believe when you think about it. My guess is that if you ask twelve different people to describe you, you just might get twelve different answers. And are you who they think you are? Maybe; maybe not. Maybe you are simply a child of God and a follower of Christ, and that's all the world needs to know.

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WHO IS THE DOCTOR?

"Doctor who?" – Asked by many, nearly forty times over the show's fifty-year history

Who is the Doctor anyway? Perhaps a more intriguing question is "When?" or "Where?" is the Doctor. When you travel through all of time and space, as the Doctor does, your identity isn't so easy to pin down. Nevertheless, we do know that the Doctor is a Time Lord, one of a race of alien beings from the planet Gallifrey, who travels around the universe fighting bad guys and righting wrongs. His vehicle of choice is called the TARDIS, which stands for "Time and Relative Dimension in Space." Along with his sonic screwdriver and a companion or two, the Doctor travels anywhere and anytime in order to rid the universe of evil.

That's a Lot of Time ...

It would take 362 hours, 53 minutes, and 43 seconds to watch every episode of Doctor Who.

Over the last fifty years, the loyal audience of Doctor Who, one of the BBC's most popular programs, has grown quite familiar with what the Doctor does, but he is still a character who is hard to pin down. In the episode "Asylum of the Daleks," the Doctor comes face-to-face with perhaps his greatest enemy, the Daleks — a race of genetically altered beings created to exterminate every creature who isn't one of them. In a strange plot twist, the Daleks ask the Doctor to travel to the Dalek asylum and do away with the Daleks who have gone mad who now threaten the existence of the Dalek race. The Doctor questions why they wouldn't just do away with their own who don't measure up, and the Daleks reveal that it is against their culture to destroy such "divine hatred," which is why they have never been able to kill him. The Daleks call the Doctor "The Predator" because of how many of them he has killed. So, is the Doctor a terrorist or a freedom fighter? In this episode, he is both.

Identity can be a tricky thing to explain. For example, suppose I asked you the question: Who are you? If I asked you to write a three-sentence bio about yourself, what would you say? How do you describe your identity? Would you start with what you do or where you're from? Maybe you feel your accomplishments say the most about you. If I asked ten of your friends to describe you, what would they say? Would I get ten different answers? Who would be right?

Maybe the answer to the "Who am I?" is just your own version of the truth. Try this: close your eyes and say your name to yourself. What do you see? Do you see your face? Maybe you see your office or your family. Maybe you see a word like honest or brave or failure or flawed. But is this accurate of who you are?

Some would say that we are who we think we are; others would argue that we are what we say — that our words reveal who we really are deep down. There's a lot of truth in this understanding — after all, our legal system is, in large part, based on the power of words. At the end of a trial, the jury says, "We find the defendant guilty (or not guilty)," and these words have a dramatic effect on the identity of the person being judged. But the spoken word can be trusted only if the speaker is reliable. For example, "Follow me, and the world will be at peace," sounds like the gospel when Jesus says it, but means something else entirely from Lex Luthor.

Still others would say that we are what we do — for instance, a hammer is a hammer because it can successfully drive a nail. A hammer will never be a baseball no matter how well you throw it, right? A lot of us tend to think about identity in terms of what we can do. When you meet someone new, what is the first thing you ask? You probably ask them what they do. Culturally speaking, we tend to place a very high value on what one does, but can that theory be trusted? If I'm on the losing flag football team, does that make me a loser? If so, for how long? Until the next win? What if I stole a pencil from the grocery store when I was in the second grade? Does that make me a thief? If so, for how long? Until I bring the pencil back? Until I ask for forgiveness? What if I do something heroic? Am I a hero until I do something cowardly?

Great Lengths

The Fourth Doctor's iconic long scarf was created when the costume designer gave the knitter several balls of yarn to choose from to make the scarf, and instead, she knitted them all together.

So am I what I think? Or what I say? Am I what I do? Maybe all are true, but none of that takes into account what the gospel says about us. Jesus spent a great deal of time in John's Gospel teaching his disciples through several "I am," statements:

"I am the light of the world." (John 8:12)

"I am the bread of life." (John 6:35)

"I am the way, the truth, and the life."(John 14:6)

Jesus' identity — his "I am" — finds its roots beyond thoughts, words, or actions. When Jesus says, "I am," he is pointing to who God is. In other words, in order to discover a deeper understanding of who we are, we must look to our Creator. When our thoughts are directed toward love of God and love of neighbor, when our words reflect the word of God found in Scripture, when our actions mirror God's lifting up of the underdog, then we discover our true identity as a child of God.

At times our actions don't reflect God's love. Sometimes we fail to love our neighbor or even...