Not For Sale

We live in a culture that worships good advertising, where the quality of anything matters less than how it is presented to its consumers. When good marketing becomes the highest virtue, everything becomes simply a product to be sold, including our own identities. You can be good and wise and virtuous but if you can’t play the game, can’t sell yourself, you will be outshouted and outshone by those who can. Your skill at self-promotion has come to mean more than any actual virtue you may possess. It doesn’t matter if you are good if you can’t look good.

This is the conclusion our society has come to that to succeed, or even survive, we must “play the game”. But our lives are not a game to God. He created us to be ourselves, and he sees through the makeup and the lighting to the person within. God is not interested in image or results. He is only interested in our hearts, in why we get up in the morning and try to live one way and not another.

This is the leap our faith demands of us: that we reject the lie that promises success, and live instead as Jesus did, willing to be made low, to be scorned and humiliated, rather than deny his Father. To live as though it were better to be ruined, wounded, and killed with God than to live in wealth and pleasure apart from him.

The world demands we invent a version of ourselves that is strong, smart, and beautiful enough to defeat our adversaries. God asks that we humble ourselves enough to allow him to make us into the people he intended us to be. Only God can give us what we long for most: to become our true selves.

Respond in Prayer

Dear God, Only you know who we truly are, and who we can be. Forgive us for pretending to be what we are not, and make us who we should be. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Michael Bonikowsky