how i look

Last week I needed to have a photo made to go with a bio for an upcoming seminar in Chicago. I asked a friend with whom I work to take a few pics of me outside (she says I tilt my head and pose..well.doesn't every beauty king?) on the grounds of the camp. As I looked at the pics later, I was disappointed with them because I just don't feel as if I "take" a good picture. I have always felt that pictures of me don't look quite right. Then a light bulb appears over my head (symbolically i think) and I think I figured out why I don't look right. As I looked at the pictures, the guy looking back at me in the pictures had his hair parted on the left, which is how I part my hair. BUT, the guy looking back at me in the mirror for the past 30 years (since I dropped the fro in high school) has his hair parted on the right side. Revelation.

How I thought I have looked all these years is exactly facially opposite of how I really look to everyone. I think the guy in the mirror is a handsome man and the man in the pictures is slightly less than that. All these years I have been standing in front of the mirror thinking that the guy in the mirror was the one who presented himself to the world, when in reality, the world saw just the opposite.

As an experiment, this past Friday I parted my hair on the other side and came into the office. People could tell something was a little different, but only one person could pinpoint the difference. But there was a difference.

Last night at Hope, I used this to illustrate a point from David Kinnaman's book, UnChristian. His point was that his research indicated that most Christians feel that they are perceived as genuine and concerned by those outside the church when in reality the majority of those outside the Christian faith perceive Christians as the opposite -- agenda-driven number counters with little or no real interest in them at all. I used this to make the point that it is very easy to think we look one way, yet everyone sees us as the opposite of what we think we present. It's one of those "wow" moments that I'm afraid too few in the Christian community would be open to hearing, yet it needs to be proclaimed.

I know it is very diffucult to realize the picture we've tried to paint for 30 years is giving the opposite effect that we have intended, and it is easy to blame the hearers for their unwillingness to hear, and interpreters for their calloused and biased interpretations to those whom we are trying to reach. I realize also that many of the Christian faith will never understand what I am trying to say, but maybe we all need to comb that part on the other side and see what happens...