I Am Ninja

I am “Ninja” … but Ninja is not what or who I am.

Recently I was invited to be a weekly contributor to a new blog called “Commenting Ninja. This blog has been started by a friend whom I met a few months ago. As a regular contributor I have been granted the title “Ninja Blogger” and am regarded as a “Ninja Chaplain” as well as various other things. You will likely be relieved to know that in the cyber-world a “ninja” is not a hired assassin or mercenary soldier. The term refers to someone who is (like a ninja) “good at what they do.”

I reflected on this new side of my persona, a few nights ago, as I boiled some rice and created a stir fry for supper. New identities are not new to me. Why, (call me crazy if you like) just yesterday I created a Facebook account for my cat (Noelle Jeske) so that non-felines (perhaps just as crazy) can keep up on her activities. In reality, my mental retreat into the mind of my cat is probably more likely something of an escape route from the busyness of life. Perhaps not so weird is the fact that I maintain and/or participate in a couple of blogs and have different personae for some of them. I care for a number of web-sites and have various pseudonymous identities as the contact person for each one. People and organizations all around the world identify me by so many different e-mail addresses or “nicknames” that it is necessary to maintain a database to keep track of them all. My wife sometimes calls me “Wally” and I call her “Schmoo”. My 26 year-old daughter calls me “Daddy”, my cat calls me “Papa Meow” and there are many who call me “Pastor”. I cannot think of a single instance when any or all of the multitude of my varied “identities” caused me to forget who I REALLY am as the son of my parents.

I am a Christian … and Christian is what I am.

My problem is that I am constantly confronted with situations in which there is a strong temptation to set aside my memory and the manifestation of what and who I am. I can be one thing in the workplace and another with my neighbor across the fence or my buddies watching the Packer game. I can be one thing at church on Sunday morning and an entirely different thing in the middle of the rush hour traffic on the Interstate. I can be one thing when sitting with my family in the living room and an entirely different thing when surfing the internet in the privacy of my study. Do you know what I’m talking about here? Surely you do. Our imaginary, made up personae rarely obscure in our minds who we really are as people. On the other hand, the dangerously sinister tendencies of the human heart and mind so often obscure our conscious awareness of who we really are as Christians from day to day and even from moment to moment. Friends, it ought not be so. If you are a Christian, never forget who, and whose, you are: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of Him Who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light;” – 1 Peter 2.9

Who and whose ARE you anyway? Be true to your identity in Him!