Face Book

It occurred to me this morning, while glancing through my e-mail, then checking out my Face Book page, to wonder why people who are not very attractive insist nonetheless on posting photos of themselves at every opportunity.

Immediately upon the heels of this thought, however, came the realization that I myself am not very attractive, and yet I post my own photos with the same general enthusiasm.

Why?

I'm supposing that it is because we all love ourselves. It requires no effort at all. We know how we are on the inside and somehow imagine that our inner worthiness will modify and transform even the ugliest of mugs. Even suicides love themselves. In fact they love themselves to death.

But take a closer look. Try to be objective. Turn on all the lights in the bathroom, the ones above the mirror as well, and take a look at the person standing there until he seems to stand alone.

Good Lord, that can't be me! I had no idea I looked that old. I had no idea my nose was that big, nor that it leaned so sharply to the left! My eyes appear to have dug their own holes over the last 30 years, and piled up the skin around the periphery like walls for a fortress.

Clearly the lighting, no matter how bright, is not good.

The story is often told of a certain primitive people in Africa who believed that these little boxes called cameras were able to capture and imprison their souls. For this reason they avoided photographs like the plague. You will not see their faces in Face Book.

It turns out, moreover, that these primitives were right--for in those few unhappily trapped and snapped, you will find in the printout not kings and princes, not lion hunters and marathon racers, not the beauteous maiden nor the tender mother, but a poor, blank, fearful, rigid collection of countenances quite devoid of the beauty which had formerly enlivened each visage and vessel.

For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Isaiah 53:2-3