Keeping It Real

My grandfather once wrote a letter to my brother and I about a picture he'd seen of our band, Scarlet Tag (The name could have been much worse. In true evangelical teenager fashion, our alternative idea was Rare Pearls). His issue was that our band looked too unhappy and rebellious. He felt that our faces should display the joy that comes from knowing Jesus instead of copying the cynical attitude of the rock stars of "the world". To illustrate, he sent along a photo of one of those travelling family gospel groups, with big smiles, heavy make-up and lots of hands resting gently on shoulders.

I hated that picture because it represented everything 19 year old me was beginning to despise about Christianity. I remember fighting with my Dad in the car on the way to church one morning and him lamenting that he would now have to "pretend to be happy". The smiles in that picture were the same smile my Dad wore on the platform that Sunday.

I promised myself that I was never going to smile like that so I embarked on a journey of "authenticity" where I strove to be "honest" and "real" at all times not realizing that those are often just code words for "cynical", "judgemental" and "self-absorbed".

Thinking of those pictures now, I realize that they aren't as different as I thought they were 10 years ago. We traded their "fake smiles" for our "casual indifference" but they're both just poses designed to hide the fact that we're all scared to death of showing people just how much we hurt.

Word Count: 269 (I broke the rules of my own blog.  I will try to think of appropriate punishment for myself).

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