Who Do You Think You Are?
Opa reflects on what drawing caricatures can teach us about identity, how we see ourselves, and the identity questions Jesus asks in Mark 8:27–29.
IDENTITYCARICATURE ART
Rom Webster & Opa
Magic Moments
Sometimes I (Opa) draw a fellow’s nose twice as big as it is, and his wife says, “Yup! That’s him!”
She might be seeing the way he tips his head when he’s about to tell a story that she has heard a hundred times before. The magic is, a few lines can catch something familiar enough to make her laugh. And it’s a lovely moment when that happens.
Words! Words! Words!
These days, even words as familiar as boy and girl can take us straight into a political argument. At the drawing table, I find myself thinking about a question that comes up long after the argument is over.
“How much of what I do with my life begins with who I think I am?”
Tell yourself you have nothing to offer, and you may never find out who needed what you had. Believe you’re somebody who can learn, and you might pick up a pencil at seventy and surprise yourself. The picture we carry of ourselves shapes what we dare to try and who we might become. How often do we stop to ask whether that picture is true?
The Jesus Question
In Mark 8:27–29, Jesus asks his disciples who people say he is. Then he makes it personal. “But who do you say that I am?”
Peter answers, “You are the Christ.”
As a caricaturist, I have often wondered what Peter began to see about himself once he’d said those words out loud.
The Caricature Questions
Who do others say you are? What do you show them about you?
Who do you say you are? What might a caricaturist (caricature artist) show the world in a cartoon about you?
And if Jesus is who Peter says he is, what might change in your life if you took seriously who God says you are?
A Culture of Caricatures
We all live in a caricature culture.
None of us ever gets our real identity exactly right. Like it or not, we live with a somewhat distorted self-image. We all have an impression of who we are (Superman… a great athlete… an entitled person… a tough guy… a really small person… a worthless person… or something else)—and while there is some truth in some of the caricature ideas we have of ourselves, those self-images are never exactly right.
We all have a story, and the caricatures of ourselves and others around us are never really the whole picture. There’s always more to the story.
Our Story
That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it…
And we’re drawing lots of caricatures too because caricature can be fun—and it can teach us a lot about life too!
