Who am I?

By: American Decency Staff

This headline on the Christian Post recently caught my attention, "Angelina Jolie Advocates Teenage Cohabitation." The article states that, "When Angelina Jolie was 14, her boyfriend was allowed to live with her. The actress plans to raise her children the same way."

Hearing this about such a high-profile, famous, and wealthy person brought to mind something that had challenged me during my recent mission trip to Guatemala, though for very different reasons.

Who am I?

In Guatemala, the question was, "who am I to be born into the wealthiest and most comfortable nation in the world to a financially comfortable family that loves me and could afford to send me to school?" Why did the stork drop me off in West Michigan and drop Jorge to a dirty hut surrounded by garbage in Guatemala where he had only a 50% chance of surviving his first 5 years of life?

Have you ever thought about that? Why were you born in the United States and not to a Christian family in Egypt? Maybe your church would have just been burned down, or you would have had friends killed in the protests.  Why were we chosen to be comfortable in the United States and not suffering in some third world or oppressed nation?

There's no human answer to that question.

There's also no human answer to, "who am I to be born to Bill and Jan Johnson and to be taught about Jesus and what He wants for me and not to Angelina Jolie who plans to encourage her kids to be sexually active at fourteen? Who am I to be born to my parents and not to the 'Sister Wives?' Who am I to be born to a Christian family in West Michigan and not to a militant Muslim family in Egypt?"

I know many of you have had much more difficult lives than I have, and I don't mean to downplay that, but I'll bet this is true of most of us. It's so easy to look at people who don't know Christ and aren't living according to His Word and to look down on them for not seeing the truth. As if we ever could have seen it on our own.

Of course, they have personal responsibility for their sin, but we don't have personal responsibility for our righteousness, and they should be pitied rather than despised.

Angelina and Brad Pitt's kids will probably never hear God's plan for sexuality. They will grow up thinking it is completely normal to have a boyfriend or girlfriend share their bed after a study session and then head off for ninth grade together in the morning.

John Bradford is famous partially for coining the phrase, "There, but for the grace of God, go I."

I think that is the only proper response to the question, "who am I?"

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