Mistaken Identity
by Oliver Carlos
Once upon a time, I was an English teacher in a Korean school in the Philippines. I worked for the Kyungnam University English language program from 2006 to 2008. The said program rented the Continuing Education Center (CEC) building inside UPLB. That’s where we had our classes, and also where the students resided. In a year, there would be 4 batches of Koreans who would arrive to learn the English language. They would enroll for a semester, and then a new batch would replace them in the next term. I worked here on a full-time capacity for 2 ½ years. I handled 10 batches in all.
The Korean students were college-age. The girls were 18 to 20 years old, while the guys were 22 to 24 years old. In Korea, all men were required to render military service when they reach the age of 20. That’s why my male students were older than their female classmates; they had already served in their armed forces.
The students were very friendly and respectful to their teachers. They said that in their country, teachers were mean and strict. It’s legal to spank students or hit them with a stick even though they were already teenagers. But they find their Pinoy teachers very kind, so they were just returning the favor. They’re easy to get along with, especially those who love basketball. We played every afternoon after classes.
A fond memory I had with them was that all of them, guys and girls alike, tell me the same thing about how I look. In their eyes, they say that I look like Eun Ji Won. I asked them who that guy was, and they said he’s a hip-hop artist, or a rapper. Further research made me find out that he’s also an actor. The funny thing is all the batches of Koreans in the 2 ½ years I spent at CEC, told that same observation. Try to google search that fellow Eun Ji Won and judge for yourselves if my students were correct.
One afternoon, a group of Korean girls came to me to ask for a picture. They said they wanted to brag to their Korean friends back home that they met Eun Ji Won in the Philippines, and in fact they had a picture of him with them. I was surprised and reluctant at their proposal, but I didn’t want to embarrass them by rejecting them on the spot, so I obliged to their idea. You can observe in the picture my half-baked smile.
It made me wonder, do I really look like that Korean celebrity? I had mixed emotions on this. I’m a bit flattered because some people see me as an icon, a Kpop star. But at the same time, I feel I’m just an imitation. I wanted to be known as the real me.
This feeling must have been felt by Peter on the night Jesus was arrested. Some people approached him as they observed he was one of the arrested man’s companions. At that point, he could either confirm their hunch, or deny it using mistaken identity as an alibi. Peter chose the latter, in fact he did it 3 times in a span of minutes. We find this story in John 18 (NIV). Here are excerpts:
“’You aren’t one of this man’s disciples too, are you?” she asked Peter. He replied, ‘I am not.’” (verse 17)
“Meanwhile, Simon Peter was still standing there warming himself. So they asked him, ‘You aren’t one of his disciples too, are you?’ He denied it, saying, ‘I am not.’”(verse 25)
“’Didn’t I see you with him in the garden?’ Again Peter denied it, and at that moment a rooster began to crow. (verses 26,27)
The difference between my case and Peter’s is that I was really a mistaken identity while Peter was the real guy they thought of. Peter stood by his lie, and that made Jesus disappointed. Peter must have felt great fear for being identified with Jesus, so he denied his connection to him.
Sometimes we too are placed in Peter’s spot. We don’t want to be identified as a Christian or a follower of Jesus because we have a variety of fears, one of which is the fear of rejection. But Jesus was ever forgiving, He gave Peter another chance. We see this in the last chapter of the Book of John. Then when we flip to the next book, the Book of Acts, we see a different Peter. He was now the fiery and zealous leader of the first Christian church. He had no more qualms of being identified with Jesus. After all, when Jesus was hanging on the cross, he was thinking of Peter, you, me, and everybody else, and he wasn’t ashamed of us. Are you afraid to be identified with Jesus? That’s something to ponder on this week.
