Not long ago, our bank sent my husband a check that he didn't write for an automobile he didn't purchase. An alert bank employee had noticed that the signature didn't quite match my husband's, although it approximated it. The bank was on top of the situation, but my husband and I took this experience as an opportunity to understand something more about true identity—that it couldn't be stolen or, more to the point, invaded. To do this, we had to look above the material view of creation to see that actual identity is derived from God, not material history or personal documents. We prayed to realize the spiritual identity of everyone—including the person who wrote the bad check—until we became certain that this spiritual perspective of creation could not include either victims or victimizers. While we may never know what measures the bank pursued, our prayer showed us that true identity remains inviolate.
The concept of identity theft is not new to me because I worked for many years in a creative field where checks and balances were instituted to ensure that ideas were credited to their originators. Neither was it new to my husband, whose grandfather was posthumously credited with having invented Technicolor, although he never derived any benefit from that invention during his lifetime. Actually, identity theft is not a recent invention at all, although its forms have changed as individuals gain easier access to personal information over the Internet. The challenge today, as in the past, stems from the misconception that one's identity is pictured on a driver's license or accounted for in a financial portfolio. When viewed this way, it would seem exposed and vulnerable. As my husband and I learned, however, spiritual identity can never be threatened or stolen. Knowing this protects all of us on the human scene as well.
