蜜芽传媒

Who do you think you are? I was stuck by this weekend鈥檚 news story that a woman in her 70s has been compensated by the NHS after learning, thanks to DNA testing, she鈥檇 been accidentally swapped with another baby shortly after birth. The new brother she has found, resembles her physically much more than the family she grew up in, but it is with the latter she feels the deepest connections.

Some of what makes us who we are, is pretty well fixed from the moment of our conception: eye and hair colour, or the propensity to contract particular diseases. Other crucial aspects of our identity, and many scientists would place sexual orientation in this category, see a combination of genetic factors, plus those nine months spent developing in the womb, as being largely determinative. By the time we are born, we are already fashioned into a definite form.

That still leaves plenty of who we become to be shaped by the world around us, the family, society and culture to which we belong. My parents, children during the strict rationing years around the Second World War, would never let me leave food uneaten. Sixty years on, I still struggle not to consume every last morsel on my plate, no matter how full I am.

But then there are the things about myself I can change. In this current season of Lent, Christians like me accept the challenge to seek to grow more into the likeliness of the Jesus we follow. I learned, early on, the impact of simply trying to behave a little better than my natural inclinations would wish: to be kinder, more generous, more ready to forgive. And that with patience and practice, what may begin as performative will often in time become nature. Many of my better habits actually began as Lenten disciplines.

I鈥檝e followed that path over many years. But I find my faith pushes me beyond the narrow goal of personal improvement. It compels me to seek to model and shape the moral environment of the wider society in which I live. The woman who discovered she had been swapped at birth, nevertheless grew up with parents she describes as a 鈥渓oving couple鈥�. This year, I鈥檝e been working to improve the treatment of those who spend some or all of their childhood in the care system. A group of young people I met, shared harrowing tales of the challenges they had faced, and some were still facing. They, like you and me, deserve not to be trapped by the past they come from, but to receive the help and support they need, to become more fully who they really are.

Show less