“No man knows himself or can describe himself with fidelity.  But he can reveal himself.  This [was] especially true of Gandhi.  He believed in revealing himself.  He regarded secrecy as the enemy of freedom – not only the freedom of India, but the freedom of man.”  Louis Fischer on the life and legacy of Gandhi, Princeton, 1961

A number of years ago I visited a friend from college during the holiday season.  We sat around a small, circular kitchen table sipping hot beverages and perusing our mutual friends’ Christmas cards.  They decorated the table in colorful quadrilaterals and depicted happy scenes of sparkling smiles and pretty bows placed just-so over fireplaces, atop the heads of beautiful children, or tied neatly around the necks of well-behaved dogs. 

It’s a nice tradition we have, isn’t it, to send our family’s most genteel greetings during the holidays? 

It’s nice, but it’s not super honest. 

I don’t think I would have noticed the simulated comeliness of it all if for but one, very different card. 

This card featured a disaster of a kitchen.  Pots, plates, bowls, cups, and food naturally used and out of place were strewn across the kitchen counters and sink.  Two parents were pictured, slightly disheveled and looking exhausted while a crying baby sat balanced atop mom’s slanted hip.  A couple of well-played kids looked displeased at having been asked to pose for a picture that interrupted their adventures and their grumpy faces and tossed hairdos topped off the family’s warmest wishes to their recipients.

It was refreshing. 

All these years later I still remember it because it was just so blatantly truthful. 

This is a small example of the way we pose for each other, but the juxtaposition of this very candid card among its postured pals serves as a model for the introduction of what our culture so readily serves – the Idol of Appearance(s). 

Our instincts are not honest representations of what’s going on in our lives. 

Our instincts are: “I’m well, how are you?”  #blessed #grateful #bestdayever

My personal go-to when all is not well is this quick and cold two-word text message: “All good.” 

That’s when my close friends know to pursue, because when I say I’m ‘all good’, I am, in fact, not ‘all good’. 

Ridiculous, isn’t it? 

With her permission, I asked a friend if I may share her reaction to finding out she would need chemo to treat her cancer diagnosis.  It wasn’t the cancer that made her emotional.  It wasn’t the chemo either.  When we really got down to it, it was the idea that others would perceive her as weak or sick that made her cry. 

This is the real us. 

We don’t want to be perceived certain ways, so we posture.  We pose.  We present ourselves as we wish to be seen.  And it is anything but authentic. 

I think that’s why we’re so drawn to raw vulnerability in people, in media, or in storytelling. 

Real life is hard.  Real life is not always pretty.  Real life is stomach bugs, financial hardship, and root canals.  Real life is getting a lot of ‘no’s’.  Real life is the messy kitchen and the grumpy kids. 

But we don’t present real. 

We put together highlight reels of our best moments and post them for others to admire.  We dress everyone up and make them stand in front of a pretty backdrop.  We don’t post our trips to the post office or the Cologuard that came to the front door, but we are sure to share three pictures per day from the tropical vacations we take. 

The old adage, “Fake it ‘til you make it” is a further example of our cultural worship of appearances.  Our posturing is encouraged all the way into our job performances. 

Insecure about what you’re doing?  Need some guidance on how to move forward?  Don’t ask for help or be straightforward about your doubts or questions.  Just fake it like you know what you’re doing until those doubts and questions go away.

But that doesn’t teach us anything but deceit. 

The Idol of Appearance(s) tells us we must deceive others to make sure they think we’re okay. 

Instead of sharing our martial challenges, we say things like, “He’s such a great dad.” Or “She’s my best friend.”  When what’s true is that there’s an alcohol addiction, or financial trouble, or interpersonal challenges that are stealing the joy, love, and respect from the marriage. 

I can’t think of a way this kind of posturing helps us. 

Nothing, and no one, gets better when aren’t honest about what’s really going on. 

Like Ficsher said: secrecy, the enemy of freedom. 

Is it that we don’t trust each other?  Is it that we have come to care too much about what others think?  Is it that we have forgotten that only One can judge us in a way that matters?  Is it that we’ve placed our value in the opinion of the crowd instead of the opinion of the One? 

I’m not sure what causes us to worship appearances the way we do, but the importance we’ve come to place on others’ perceptions has blinded our village.  We have begun to care so much about what others think that we’ve lost sight of the fact that we have only One to please. 

TECHNOLOGY

Our worship of appearances finds a strong home in the world of technology – one in which it thrives and has every opportunity to lie to us about the faux importance of image, presentation, and physical appearances. 

Is it a problem to look pretty and have gorgeous things?  Is it somehow wrong to present a lovely picture of our families during the holidays?  Of course not!  It’s when these things become ultimate that problems arise, and I simply posit that technology has made it very easy for these things to become ultimate. 

We see the worship of appearances take center stage when it comes to socials, television, contemporary media, and marketing.  Though we’ve come a long way in accepting different definitions of beauty, we still worship what looks good to us and we still spend obscene amounts of time, money, and energy to attain whatever standard of beauty we accept. 

This worship expresses itself in technology through our ‘shoot it until it’s perfect’ posts on socials, and egregious time deposits in consuming television and media.  And it tells us we must post often; that the content must be attractive; and that we must come across as appealing. 

As consumers, we see stories from vacations, work retreats, celebrations of births, birthdays, graduations, and promotions.  What we do not see are things that are much more common – mundane, even.  Things that are daily and unrelenting.  Things that are a much more accurate representation of what our lives are really like. 

We don’t see pictures from the grocery store, or staff meetings, or standing in line at the DMV.  We don’t see posts about familial fights or days rife with anxiety, doubt, or depression. 

What we present, and thereby what we consume, is a not-so-factual roll of what our most appealing circumstances.  It’s majority fiction.  And it has become a focus of our collective worship, positioning the Idol of Appearance(s) front and center on a daily basis. 

And our worship doesn’t stop there.  The appearance god is not limited to socials. 

We also fall at the feet of appearances by what we consume through media. 

We worship people who look good and position them in places of authority, fame, or influence simply because we find them attractive.  Today is a day in which we find the most influential voices informing us and our children are those in positions of influence simply because they’re physically appealing. 

How do we begin to give voice to character over physical appeal?  Well that’s really up to us, isn’t it? 

One person at a time, one voice at a time, we have the ability and opportunity to lift up and honor those who display the content of character we hope for future generations to exemplify.  We can follow them.  We can share their words.  We can use people of character as examples for our kids instead of buying them the latest copies of Seventeen to use as a guide. 

I believe there’s much we can do to dethrone the appearance god and it simply may be a matter of what we actively choose to value. 

FOOD/MOVEMENT

I combine food and movement in this chapter because the way we worship appearances through food and movement is very much the same, and it starts and ends with inordinate loves. 

We touched on inordinate loves in the Idol of Validation, and we’ll discuss it again in a chapter to come.  Inordinate loves, or counterfeit gods, in Tim Keller’s words, are the things we worship instead of Christ.  Any of the idols we’ve explored so far could be considered inordinate loves in different ways. 

The Idol of Appearance(s) comes in when we make our food choices or our movement choices ultimate, defining, or identifying.  In other words, when we start to define ourselves as someone who does CrossFit or completes Ironman races; or we regularly prioritize workouts over everything else in our lives; or we measure out every macronutrient for every meal and post it socials.  This is when we have started to worship our food and movement choices through the Idol of Appearances.  They have become so important that they are ultimate in our lives.  They are the choices in which we find our identities.  They are how we introduce ourselves to new people, how we present ourselves to our social fan clubs, and they determine how we prioritize our time, money, and energy every day.  When these accomplishments define us, we know they have become little gods through which we are finding meaning. 

But what happens when something changes, and we can no longer complete those races?  What happens when we have an injury and have to sit out of the CrossFit workouts?  What happens when we can’t consume the exact right nutrition for a week or two?  As Tim Keller states, if it can be taken away, it’s not something in which to place our identities.  And all of these things can be taken away – our abilities to move, perform, compete, or consume the right nutrition.  All of these things can disappear in the blink of an eye. 

And please, don’t get me wrong – making healthful food and movement choices is tremendous!  CrossFit does community excellently!  Races are a great way to stay motivated and work toward healthful lifestyles.  Choosing to move our bodies often and eat well are beautiful ways we can honor the gift God gave us in our bodies.  The opportunity we have is to make sure we are making these choices for stewardship of our bodies – not as a means to glorify ourselves or to find a place for our identities. 

REST

We talked about rest, peace, and quietude when we explored the Idol of Busy, but I think the discussion on rest is also very relevant to the Idol of Appearance(s).  Here I’m not so much referring to physical rest, but more so rest of the soul. 

All this keeping up, positioning, and pretense is exhausting. 

I’m not sure we know why we do it or what it is our presentations are supposed to achieve, but I know it’s a lot of work.  There is no freedom in secrecy.  Freedom is easy.  Freedom is an easy yoke.  And we know whose yoke is easy.

 Jesus said,

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  Matthew 11:28-30, NIV

I must believe there is much for us to learn in being gentle and humble at heart.  I wonder how growing in these ways will lighten our load.  I wonder how becoming gentler and humbler at heart may release our needs to present ourselves the way we think others should be receiving us.  I wonder how these characteristics would change our social posts, enable us to honestly answer the question “how are you?”, and help us more readily model vulnerability.  There is great soul rest offered to us in knowing whose we are.  Perhaps a deep knowledge and heart acceptance of that truth could release us from our worship of appearances. 

Maybe it could set us entirely free of our secrecies. 

COMMUNITY

Our worship of the Idol of Appearance(s) has various levels of implications.  Like many of our idols, though we worship appearances as individuals, the effects of this worship become collective, and the implications of our worship are collective as well. 

As I mentioned earlier, the premise of presenting ourselves in the way we hope to be perceived is deceit.  In many cases we must blur the truth in order to present what we desire others to observe about us.  The challenges that arise from such behaviors are many, but what is perhaps most devastating is the imprisonment and division that happens when we silo ourselves off behind our walls of pretense.  We build fortresses around our souls and stop authentically sharing our lives and as a result, we become isolated in our own realities that are then only real to us. 

This paves the road for individualism. 

In our culture we have come to pursue excellence and thriving for good ole Number 1.  The Idol of Self(ie) exposed our unending worship of ourselves, our needs, and our desires, wants, and wishes.  The Idol of Appearance(s) would say that we must present ourselves as achieving all of those things – whether or not it’s true. 

This steals from the way we thrive – community. 

We need each other.  Desperately.  And we can’t live in community if we can’t be honest.  We can’t share a resource we don’t know someone needs.  And we can’t believe we’re going to receive something if we don’t ask. 

The adoration of appearances silos us from the rest of the world.  It creates isolation that fosters anxiety, depression, and insecurity.  The results make critical the need to be authentic.  We cannot thrive without each other; therefore we cannot thrive without the willingness to be vulnerable, honest, and upfront about our true states. 

And we can all participate in this.  This is not some kind of far-off magic or even something so hard as breaking an alcohol, drug, or sugar addiction.  We’re not talking about forcing ourselves into the gym every day or removing whole food groups from our diets. 

This is as simple as telling the truth.  Listening when someone speaks.  Inviting people over for meals.   Welcoming others’ weaknesses along with our own. 

We can be trustworthy people by keeping our words, keeping confidences, and keeping coffee dates.  And we can be the first people who model vulnerability when it’s hard. 

I don’t believe tearing down the Idol of Appearance(s) is the hardest slaying we’ll do, but it will take intentionality, and we can only do it together.  Those of you journeying with me through this project in real-time have been essential to revealing the places where I struggle with each of these idols, and I can’t begin to articulate my gratitude for you.  Maybe part of the reason Jesus sent out the disciples in pairs is because He knew how much we need each other in order to truly know ourselves. 

So here’s to knowing. 

Knowing you, and knowing me, and knowing all the not-so-cute parts in between. 

Nic Ford