Should You Photoshop Your Life?

Oct 9, 2015 3132

Real me on the left; Fake me on the right 🙂

There is an obsession with looking good. And now we have the technology to be able to make ourselves look good through photographs.

Models are photo-shopped to look slimmer to the point of pictorial anorexia, and older people get photoshopped to look young.

At times, when I have send photos of myself overseas so that flyers can be produced for gospel meetings, I am bemused to find that my photo ends up being photo-shopped to look younger – usually by having the grey of my beard replaced by a deep brown. Sometimes this extends to having what little hair remains on my head similarly darkened.

Do my friends somehow mistakenly think that I am old? That they can somehow improve me?

I have seen people photo-shopped to such ridiculous lengths that they are unrecognisable. In a sense, we are going backwards to a time before photographs were invented in order to record the truth – to capture the reality of life. Back then, the rich and powerful had perfectly proportioned statues made of themselves, as well as impossibly beautiful paintings. I wonder what Ms Mona Lisa really looked like?

I grant that everyone has their little vanities – I do too. I guess that these photo-shopped photos are an expression of how people they see their true identities, or how who they wish to be.

But in the end, that is not how to achieve what you are really looking for.

God does not photo-shop anyone. He does not gloss over, pretend, or falsify who we really are. He loves and accepts us just how we are.

He announces that we are beautiful and perfect through the merits of Jesus Christ. He saves us. What better basis for change could there be than that? And then he goes about transforming our lives.

However, the changes that God makes in the lives of those whom he has saved are not of the digital sort. God doesn’t engage in make-believe. God is not a photo-shopper. Instead, God works true transformation, from the inside-out.

In the end, each one of us, you and I, will be unique – the greatest masterpieces of God’s creation. It will all be totally real and authentic. That is what he values most.

That’s the kind of picture I want to see!

– Eliezer Gonzalez

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