Hiding in plain sight

The arrest of former Bosnian Serb despot Radovan Karadzic has topped summer beach novels in doling out drama and intrigue. It also poses an interesting question.

Karadzic has been a fugitive since 1995, when the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia indicted him for war crimes. He directed the Siege of Sarajevo and is believed to have ordered the Srebrenica massacre and numerous other massacres across Bosnia. At his command, international justice officials believe, tens of thousands of non-Serbs—primarily Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats—were slaughtered, hundreds of thousands lost their homes, and many thousands more wound up in concentration camps.

The carnage catapulted Karadzic to the ranks of Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein in the pantheon of evil dictators. (Not Adolf Hitler; nobody’s down there with Hitler.)

Arrested in the last place you'd look

But the plot twist in the Karadzic saga spun out this Monday, July 21, when he was arrested in Belgrade, Serbia, living in plain sight. Sounds like a turn in a Robert Ludlum or David Baldacci novel.

The New York Times noted Karadzic didn’t hide “in a distant monastery or a dark cave,” but “behind an enormous beard, white ponytailed hair topped with an odd black tuft, and a new life so at odds with his myth as to deflect suspicion.”

So that's who the old guy is

For years, Karadzic had been presenting himself as “Dr. Dragan Dabic,” a psychiatrist who practiced alternative medicine in a Serbian clinic. He looked more like a funky Santa or a pudgy Albus Dumbledore than the mastermind of ethnic cleansing.

People who knew him well and/or followed his case closely said they wouldn’t have recognized him. “If I passed him on the street, I don’t think I would have looked twice,” acknowledged Dejan Anastasijevic, a reporter who specialized in war crimes and followed his case closely for Vreme , a political weekly in Belgrade. Even Karadzic’s landlord didn’t know his tenant was one of the world’s most-wanted fugitives.

Politicians and pundits have speculated how this could happen. How could such a familiar persona “hide” under the noses of authorities for so long? Some have speculated the Serbian government knew Karadzic’s whereabouts but turned a blind eye until they yielded to pressure to capture him so they can enter the European Union.

Whatever. The fact is one of the world’s most infamous tyrants went incognito for years. Right in front of the people who supposedly knew him best.

Who does this remind you of?

So, here’s the question: Don’t Christians do this all the time?

If we claim our true identity, then we bear the unmistakable marks of Christ. If we live out who we truly are, then we plainly, visibly—recognizably—present the presence of Christ wherever we go.

But how many of us live at least part of our lives incognito? People who interact with us regularly and believe they know us well don’t have a clue about our identity as a believer in Jesus Christ? We don’t wear a ponytail, long beard and old-coot glasses, but we present the parts of our personalities that are thoroughly secular, areligious and very unlike the nature to which Christ has called us.

Reminds me of the old evangelists’ line: If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?