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.

* * *

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 remember God in our daily to-dos. The good news is that God offers us forgiveness through Jesus' death and resurrection, so no matter what, our identity is rooted and grounded in the person of Jesus. Even when we make mistakes, our identity is restored through what Jesus has done for us. So identity is not what we think or say or do — it is what Christ has said and done for us.

In what ways has your identity changed over the last few years?

What is the basic identity of a Christian? Is it rooted in faith? Action? Grace?

* * *

HAVING TWO HEARTS

A good person produces good from the good treasury of the inner self, while an evil person produces evil from the evil treasury of the inner self. The inner self overflows with words that are spoken. – Luke 6:45

Looking at the Doctor, you wouldn't know that he is from another time and place. He looks human. He eats our food and breathes our air. He leaps for joy and weeps in lament. He gets angry and becomes fearful. He looks like you and me, except he isn't. Time Lords, such as the Doctor, have two hearts. Having two hearts is the physiological source of his incessant excitement and energy, but having two hearts means more than being able to outrun a bad guy or survive a grueling test. He's like us, but he's more. Dare I say that he is fully human and fully ... Time Lord?

The Doctor certainly seems to be a Christ figure in the show, in much the same way that a superhero, such as Superman, always swoops in to save the day. Both are characters from somewhere far from the earth, who drop out of the sky with special powers only used for truth, justice, and all that is good. In some episodes, the Doctor's expression as a Christ figure is quite explicit. At the conclusion of "Last of the Time Lords," the Doctor's nemesis, the Master, seems to have delivered the Doctor a life-ending blow; but at the last moment, the Doctor is, in essence, resurrected. In the Doctor's final moment, through the help of his companion, Martha, all of humanity thinks of the Doctor at the same time, and their "belief" in him brings him back to life. Through this resurrection, he is able to save humanity from the Master's enslavement. The Doctor's faith in humanity is what, in turn, saves humanity itself, and the Doctor had to rely on humanity in order to save himself.

Salvation is not a one-way street. The gospel story shows us that salvation is rooted in relationship, especially when we think of Jesus' birth. It was quite an epiphany for me when I really considered the fact that Jesus had human parents. What was God thinking? Because being born into humanity certainly puts Jesus the baby in a vulnerable place. Professor and theologian Stanley Hauerwas writes:

To be human is to be vulnerable, but to be a baby is to be vulnerable in a manner we spend a lifetime denying. Indeed Jesus was a baby refusing to forego the vulnerability that would climax in his crucifixion. And as such, Jesus was entrusted to the care of Mary and Joseph. They could not save him from the crucifixion, but they were indispensable agents to making his life possible.

God really surprises me sometimes. The Savior had parents. I've known this fact for quite awhile, but it took on new meaning when I became a parent myself. The Savior having parents sounds like a terrible plan. Parents don't always get it right. Parents don't always keep their composure. Parents forget things — um, when Jesus was twelve years old, Mary and Joseph left Jerusalem to head home, and it took them a full day to realize that Jesus wasn't with them! Some days I do all right, and other days I look up at the ceiling and say, "God, I wish I was better at this." What was God thinking when he decided to come to earth, and then rely on humanity in order to save humanity?

God, coming to earth "in-the-flesh," shows us that having faith actually makes us vulnerable. Faith is not a protective bubble against the dark places of the world. If it were, God would have never allowed himself to be raised by a pair of human, fallible, everyday parents. Jesus' birth and life reveal that God trusted humanity more than humanity has ever trusted itself: "God's righteousness is being revealed in the gospel, from faithfulness for faith, as it is written, The righteous person will live by faith" (Romans 1:17) — through faith for faith, Paul is saying. God had to trust in humanity in order to save humanity. What does it mean for God to trust in the broken, imperfect, screwed-up people of the world? To me it means that if God can trust in the midst of imperfection, I guess I can too.

In the two-part story, "Human Nature/Family of Blood," we learn about the time the Doctor actually loses one of his hearts. In these episodes, the Doctor uses a Chameleon Arch (which looks like a pretty fantastic pocket watch) to rewrite his own DNA from Time Lord to human in order to escape detection from "The Family," a telepathic entity seeking to feed off the Doctor's amazing ability to regenerate. The Doctor transforms his DNA and becomes a human hiding away as a schoolteacher, John Smith, at Farringham School for Boys in 1913 England.

Changing his DNA made it possible for the Doctor to hide, but becoming fully human has its shortcomings. First, the Doctor doesn't remember who he is. He has to rely on his season three companion, Martha Jones, to fill in the gaps. Martha, an actual doctor from twentieth-century London, first met the Doctor in the season opener, "Smith and Jones." Just before changing his DNA, the Doctor tells Martha that it is up to her to keep him out of sight, and that she must not reveal his true identity to anyone, even himself. Only when "The Family" has lost the trail is she to open the Chameleon Arch and transform him back. So, for most of the episode, the Doctor assumes that he is John Smith, an average schoolteacher living in 1913 England.

The second and more significant drawback to changing his DNA meant that it left the Doctor with only one heart. Having two hearts seems relatively unimportant to the Doctor's story, until the audience realizes what having an extra heart affords him — for one, the Doctor seems to be uninfluenced by any particular culture. For example, Martha Jones is a black woman. Her race is inconsequential to the Doctor, but through the early twentieth-century human eyes of John Smith, Martha is considered a lowly servant because of her race, only allowed to speak when spoken to. It seems that when the Doctor becomes fully human, he inherits our biases and missteps, losing his ability to rise above bigotry and fear. It appears that an abundance of hearts is what's needed to be critically empathetic and ethically good.

All in the Family

David Tennant, who played the Tenth Doctor, married Georgia Moffett, the daughter of the Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison, which surely made for some very confusing family reunions!

On the whole, the Doctor has two hearts. He looks like us, acts like us, and has spent so much time on the earth that he knows humanity better than it knows itself. Having two hearts means that the Doctor is a walking symbol of abundant grace. In a recent interview, head writer Steven Moffat said:

When they made this particular superhero, they didn't give him a gun. They gave him a screwdriver to fix things. They didn't give him a tank or a warship or an X-Wing fighter, they gave him a call box from which you can call for help. And they didn't give him a superpower or pointy ears or a heat ray. They gave him an extra heart. They gave him two hearts. And that's an extraordinary thing; there will never come a time when we don't need a hero like the Doctor.

His "cup runneth over" with compassion for the least and the lost. What would humanity be like if we had two hearts? The good news is that we don't have to guess. Being in Christ means that our heart works together with Christ's and with each other. When we come together as the body of Christ, we don't just have two hearts, but all of our hearts are united together in a beautiful vulnerability. God had to rely on humanity in order to save humanity; therefore, we are called to trust in God and each other so that the world might be transformed for the good.

Is there someone in your life who is so kind that they seem to have "two hearts"? What makes them so kind?

What breaks your heart? How might God be using that to call you into deeper relationship with him?

* * *

I NEVER FORGET A FACE

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! – 2 Corinthians 5:17 NRSV

No doubt we've all gone through old photo albums and found pictures of ourselves and said, "I can't believe that was me!" If we sorted through your old boxes, maybe we'd find an unflattering middle school class picture or a Glamour Shots photo shoot you wish had never happened. Maybe you'd look back at the "old," who is young and fit and seems to be having fun, and think, I really can't believe that was me. While you can look at that ten- year-old picture and certainly claim you are the same person, the fascinating fact is that, biologically speaking, you actually aren't the same person you are today. A large percentage of the cells in the human body are replaced every seven to ten years, so your body has actually been regenerating and changing throughout those years, while weirdly keeping "you" intact.