Creating our own image

Is this a true image of a person?!

We all want to look our best. For some, that means investing in the latest fashion. But clothes don’t make the person; we also create an image to project the character we want others to see. Yet underneath, that’s rarely the true “me”.

Crafty deception

A minority of people craft an alter ego, a Jekyll and Hyde existence as two distinct persons. Anthony Blunt was one. He was a renowned art historian and worked with the Queen, but while a student he had been recruited as a Russian agent. His friend Victor (later Lord) Rothschild, an eminent zoologist, didn’t know that and recruited Blunt into the British security service (MI5) during World War II. Blunt duly passed on all he knew to his Russian handler.

Although Blunt confessed to his treachery in 1964, his double act wasn’t made public until 1979. People were astounded. Rothschild, who had described him as “a saint”, “found it almost impossible to believe”. A former MI5 secretary was more graphic. “My God, he was a charmer. We were all a bit in love with Anthony. It was exactly like being in an earthquake – or on a quicksand, I couldn’t believe it….I mean the whole world shook. It really shook for me.”¹

Mixing the palette

Few of us go that far. Driven by ambition or our perception of other people’s expectations, we’re more like the character in T.S.Eliot’s The Cocktail Party  who is

                        “…dressed for a party
            And going downstairs, with everything about you
            Arranged to support you in the role you have chosen.”²
We select our roles, our images, from a palette of options: how do I want to appear to this person or this group at this time?

Management guru Charles Handy did this in his younger years. Later, he reflected that “in trying to be someone else I neglected to concentrate on the person I could be….I was, in retrospect, hiding from myself, a slave to the system rather than its master. We find ourselves through what we do and through the long struggle of living with and for others.”³

A crumbling image

The images we create for ourselves often fail to fulfil their potential and sometimes fall apart. Handy saw the problem and sought to remedy it. By contrast diplomat Ted Mundy in John le Carré’s Absolute Friends became disoriented by the habit. “He no longer knows which parts of him are pretending. Perhaps all of him is. Perhaps he has never been anything but pretended man.”⁴ Into that scenario the New Testament offers both hope and advice.

The biblical perspective

God is not deceptive: “I the Lord speak the truth; I declare what is right” (Isaiah 45:19). In return, he expects us to demonstrate inner truth (not just external conformity, Psalm 51:6). Deception is almost natural to us (Jeremiah 17:9) yet contrary to all that God stands for (John 8:44; 2 John 7) so cannot be part of Christian lifestyle, 2 Corinthians 4:2. (The context here is personal life and ministry. Some security or diplomatic roles might require individuals to assume identities or be economical with truth. There may be exceptional grey areas in public ethics but that is not our concern here.)

Rather, we’re “made in the image of God” (Genesis 1:26), that is, with moral and spiritual consciousness and creative potential. We’re to allow the renewal and development of that image so that we more resemble, or reflect, the guileless character and attitudes of Jesus (1 Peter 2:22; Colossians 3:10). He returns us slowly to become the people we know we could and should be, better even than the surface image we put on every morning. It’s a cultural change, not a cosmetic one. 

Think and talk

1.  Why do we create images for ourselves? What are we afraid of, and what are we trying to achieve? What can we learn about this from the historical and literary quotes above?

2.  Read Colossians 3:5-17. Put in your own words the old and new “images” which are described here. Take time over this and consider all the implications for personal life and corporate relationships.  
3.  Some people work hard at projecting an image. Others don’t care what people think of them. How do we strike the balance between honest “what you see is what you get” and insensitivity?

References

1.  Christopher Andrew, The defence of the realm, Allen Lane 2009, pp.219, 270; B. Penrose and S. Freeman, Conspiracy of silence, Grafton Books 1986 p. 141.
2.  T.S. Eliot, Complete poems and plays, Faber & Faber 1969, p.362.
3.  Charles Handy, The hungry spirit, Arrow Books 1998, p.86f.
4.  John le Carré, Absolute Friends, Coronet Books 2004, p.198.

© Derek Williams 2013