Dear Friends,
How do you know who you are? Perhaps more to the point, how does somebody else know who you are?
Last week I needed to provide my ID to a firm of solicitors. I completed all the usual questions – name, address, date of birth and so on – and then they sent a link to an app for me to send some biometric data. That’s where the fun began. The app required me, amongst other things, to take a selfie, and to record a short video clip of me reading out some numbers. This might be easy for many people, but not for me.
I’ve never quite got the hang of selfies. If I hold the phone far enough away to get my head into the picture, I find it very hard to keep my hand steady while pressing the button with my thumb. If the shot isn’t in focus it won’t work, so each attempt can take a while – by which time my arm is tired and the steadiness even harder to achieve. I had seven goes rejected as ‘too blurry’ before I managed one that would pass muster. And then I had to do it all again for the video.
I can see why this is needed. Identity fraud is a serious issue which can be horribly difficult for victims to sort out. And while it is possible for someone to copy a signature, or even to forge legal documents, I doubt anyone could recreate the precise expression of bewildered frustration that I finally delivered.
But all of this is about external information. No amount of legal ID can tell you what a person is like to live with, what their gifts and skills are, their hopes and dreams, or when they last saw a butterfly. This is a different kind of knowing, something much harder to capture on paper or via a phone. This is the kind of knowing the psalmist speaks about: ‘O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up […] Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely’. (Psalm 139). And that includes the unprintable words that were on my tongue when I was wrestling with the selfie.
How do you know who you are? Whatever your name, age or status in life, wherever you live, each one of us is a child of God who knows us through and through, and loves us for the whole of who we are. And God’s gaze is a lot kinder and more forgiving than a phone camera.
Enjoy the rest of your summer.
Every blessing,
Sue
