Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage? Moreover, this manager frequently bids the same actor to go back in a different costume, so that he who has but lately played the king in scarlet now acts the flunkey in patched clothes. Thus all things are presented by shadows. -Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly

Photoshop lets me be whoever I want for a brief, narcissistic moment (yes, that’s my face strutting down the catwalk). Websites ranging from Yearbook Yourself to Face In Hole have capitalized on our identity-switcheroo imaginations. It’s rather addictive. One glimpse of yourself as Margaret Thatcher or Jack Sparrow or a Teletubby and you’re hooked. And did I forget to tell you? Photoshopped religion allows you the same creative fake-out.

I’ve had some practice with this sort of thing before, but my own faith identity crisis, not any clever software, powered the transformations. In junior high school, I attended a Pentecostal youth group, and I fitted my head so perfectly onto the “on fire for Christ” look that you’d swear I was the real thing. In high school, I went back and forth between a legitimate believer and a glammed-up version of my spiritual self. When I finally got to college, I had configured a handful of evangelical variations of my true self: one for casual dating, one for relating intellectually to my professors, another for spouse-hunting, and a really good one for quiet times with God.

When your focus is on yourself, Christianity is a just a cool masquerade party. You can create whatever self-serving identity suits the moment. But the fourth chapter of the book of Hebrews says this about our hidden motives: Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable.

Now I’m in trouble. The terrifying, beautiful, redemptive thing about the New Testament is that it constantly reminds me that external appearances don’t mean squat.

When I attended high school in Texas in the 1980s, I remember girls (and sometimes their big-haired mothers too) who would go to a store in the mall named Star Shots, a creepy faux-studio with plenty of pancake makeup. A couple of formula-trained photographers would glam up their clients and drape them over leopard skin rugs for an hour while clicking their shutters. For fifty bucks and a couple of hours, you could get a counterfeit version of yourself to hang in your foyer.

Jesus used different metaphors, but you can hear him attacking the Pharisees and lawgivers for the airbrushed 16 x 20 reproductions that they proudly hung in their synagogues.  Paul also speaks to the church at Corinth this way: We refuse to wear masks and play games. We don't maneuver and manipulate behind the scenes. And we don't twist God's Word to suit ourselves. Rather, we keep everything we do and say out in the open, the whole truth on display, so that those who want to can see and judge for themselves in the presence of God. (2 Cor. 4:2)

The problem with taking Christianity into the studio is that the final product might bear little resemblance to the true Christ. The truth is supplanted by fiction—the Christ we invented rather than the Christ revealed in the Bible. It is because of this danger that Paul tells us For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord. (2 Cor. 4:5)

I’m afraid I’ve been guilty of photoshopped faith. I have felt the shame of airbrushing my own identity instead of letting the spirit of God clothe me. But today, because of God’s grace, I pray that I would be the same, through and through, whether you meet me in the sanctuary or in the street. In Erasmus’s words, I don’t want my life to be “presented by shadows” but under the clear, good light of Jesus Christ.