“Don’t be a caricature of yourself.”

It was something God whispered to me a couple years ago.

What is a caricature?

It’s an exaggerated image. You take some prominent features of an individual, exaggerate them to humorous proportions, and you’ve got a caricature.

Now, what would it mean to be a caricature of oneself?

It would mean attempting to identify whatever is distinct about oneself and then exaggerating it. For me those distinctions would have to do with my calling, my gifts, my doctrinal slants, etc… Exaggerating these things means fixating upon them, over-emphasizing them, assuming too much knowledge about them, speaking too often of them, using them to label, define and explain my life.

Why would anyone do this?

To distinguish oneself. To show that I am special. To prove that i have something unique, and therefore i am useful, necessary and worthy of attention.

People do this all the time. I’d guess it’s most often out of brokenness and an ignorance of our true value to God. In my opinion, this happens a lot with ministries and movements and such. In an attempt to justify our existence we seek distinctiveness and end up becoming caricatures of ourselves. Our differences become over-exaggerated. We are reduced to goofy, disproportionate sketches.

This is a tragedy. We are so much more than a cheap, goofy sketch sold at a carnival. We are Christ’s workmanship. We are the Father’s masterpiece. We were made in the image of God. We are beautifully complex. We cannot be described or explained in a sentence. Our existence is not justified by our uniqueness nor by our usefulness. It is justified by our Maker’s desire. We are dramatically different from one another in a million mysterious ways. There’s no need to distinguish ourselves: we are distinguished. We need not emphasize our distinctions: they emphasize themselves like a light placed on lampstand, like a city built on a hilltop. What we are, what God has given us, what our hearts are truly passionate about: all these become evident as we live them out.

Let’s not settle for a caricaturized christianity. Let’s embrace the complexity and mystery and allow what is true to become evident. Live with Jesus and watch the image of God emerge through your life.