Our lives become strewn about the Web. Fragmented. People encounter online lifewidgets, but they don’t see the grit; they see the facade we hoist up for all to see. Our life story, a miniwiki page: bookmarked, filed, accumulated. At the end of the day, we canclose our relationships as we close our laptops, untouched and unmoved by the lives of others. Our avatars and profiles look like mere splinters of who we really are.

But life is not like that. It’s rich with nuance and complexity. It is unrelenting and never shuts off, a concurrence of the terrible and beautiful.

MASTERS OF DISGUISE—THE VENEER OF PERSON
Yeah I am the jigsaw man, I turn the
world around with a skeleton hand say …
I am electric head, a cannibal core a television
said
—Rob Zombie (”More Human Than Human“)

“Meet Julia Allison,” the headline reads. “She can’t act. She can’t sing. She’s not rich. But thanks to a genius for self-promotion—plus Flickr, Twitter, and her blogs—she’s become an Internet celebrity. How she did it—and how you can too.” This was the teaser for Wired magazine’s feature article about a woman named Julia Allison. She graced the cover in her sexed-up style, with an equally provocative article layout conveying the idea that she is a celebrity. But is she really?

Julia represents an extreme example of veneer, a fabricated expression of her true self. She leverages the Internet through constant blogging and Twittering to achieve celebrity status. Her trick “is to think of herself as the subject of a magazine profile, with every post or update adding dimensions to her as a character. ‘I treat it like a fire,’ she says. ‘You have to add logs, or it’ll be like one of those YouTube videos that flame out.’”6

Because of people—pseudo-celebrities—like Julia Allison, celebrity status is fair game to anyone with a laptop and Web camera. We can all fabricate publicity stunts and manipulate pictures to become someone we are not. Everyone is entitled to their 15MB of fame.

Life on the computer screen permits us to “project ourselves into our own dramas, dramas in which we are producer, director, and star.… Computer screens are the new location for our fantasies, both erotic and intellectual.”7 So we live in two worlds. We all wake up and brush our teeth and head to work. We get into real cars and have real families and friends. We go to high school football games, attend college, and get promotions. This world is very real.

The other world, however, lives primarily in the ether and in our minds. We see images on the television and the movie screen, we visit websites and blogs and follow people on Twitter, and suddenly this virtual world emerges. It’s all towers of fame and wealth, and everything we could ever want stands in full view, staring us down, beckoning us. And so we indulge, plunging into the celebrity culture so we can escape the real world. We wake up, spread the preserves on our toast, and head out for another day, all the while envisioning what it would be like to live like someone who doesn’t exist: Celebrity Me.

We lift up the self over all else, and in this we see the beginnings of a cultural narcissism in which everyone seems to love “the self.” We try to perfect the physical self through tans and exercise and plastic surgery, and we try to perfect the inner self through therapy and self-help seminars.

In the end, our idol is our self. Theologian John Calvin is often quoted as saying that our hearts are perpetual idol factories. This seems especially true in our celebrity culture where the pursuit of self moves us farther from God. He fades as the star of self shines bright. Jewish philosopher Martin Buber comments, “Something has stepped between our existence and God to shut off the light of heaven … [and] that something is in fact ourselves, our own bloated selfhood.”8

But no matter how hard we try, an idol cannot fulfill the human need for God—a real, living, intimate God. We need our God to be accessible, not with the on-off button of a remote control but through relationship. “An idol leads a man, by necessity, into loneliness,” writes theologian Klaus Bockmuehl. “An idol leads man into loneliness, when what man needs is a god with whom he can have dialogue.”9

The God of Abraham does not, however, lead anyone into loneliness. He leads us into himself. He calls each by name toward himself, the essence of all that is good and holy, full of fear and wonder. This is where he calls you.

Let your beauty manifest itself
Without talking and calculation
You are silent. It says for you: I am.
And comes in meaning thousandfold,
Comes at long last over everyone.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (”Initial“)

Some will think we are overstating, but the truth remains: we are becoming a society that would rather simulate reality—relationships, experiences, and faith—than take the time to endeavor “into the real.” Let us take our sons and daughters to the park, our spouses on a date. Read a book. Paint a picture. Take a photo. Write a poem. Take a walk. Ride a bike. Smell the coffee. And do all of this without twittering about it or announcing it on Facebook or posting a YouTube video. Do it because life isn’t lived in pixels and bytes but in the amazing technicolor of a beautiful, beautiful world.

Our social status is of little importance; we need not try to inflate it. We must check our motivesand operate in a pure way; we must learn to discern and discover valuable cultural artifacts versus commodities.

If we are to regain our humanity, we must begin to strip away our veneer, something that can only be done when we come to the full realization that we are created in God’s image. We should not be looking for value in our fashions, our things, our Facebook friends, or our blog postings. Instead, we should be shining the truth of our flawed, redeemed, and beautiful selves. This resonates
as nothing else does. Our value is found in our Creator, not in the created. We have value because God says we do. This is enough.

When we believe this, and live like it is so, it is a lovely thing. Our guards will be down and we can live, love, and serve in true community and relationship with those around us. Our honesty will be refreshing; our sense of value will be sought after. We can live as we were created. We will have nothing to hide or inflate because we are beautiful in the eye of the Creator.

Thomas Merton, in his book New Seeds of Contemplation, says it wonderfully:

We are at liberty to be real, or to be unreal. We may be true or false, the choice is ours. We may wear now one mask and now another, and never, if we so desire, appear with our own true face. But we cannot make these choices with impunity. Causes have effects, and if we lie to ourselves and to others, then we cannot expect to find truth and reality whenever we happen to want them.

… We are even called to share with God the work of creating the truth of our identity. We can evade this responsibility by playing with masks, and this pleases us because it can appear at times to be a free and creative way of living. It is quite easy, it seems to please everyone. But in the long run the cost and the sorrow come very high.

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