WE ARE WHO WE ARE

Contrary to an old, old commercial it's not what's up front that counts. I have long since forgotten the product but only remember the commercial's punch line. Being up front, visible, seen, isn't always, if ever, what is most important. As with a really beautiful woman: beauty lies not in what's up front – face and figure – but what's beneath, inside. What's up front may be enticing. But often what's up front conceals rather than reveals.

It is very tempting for us to want to, and in fact to actually put on false fronts so that we seem to appear other than we are because we somehow seem to feel that that is what is expected of us or that that is what is necessary to get ahead, to succeed. And it may work for a while; but sooner or later the charade has to cease. When it does, the real person hiding behind that false front, hidden behind the mask, that real person will eventually emerge, perhaps much to our immediate dismay but certainly to our everlasting relief. Playing games with reality may be fun, exciting, even dangerous, for a while. But in the long run it only causes grief.

That real person is the one deep inside us: the one with all those good qualities, and some bad faults as well. For no one of us is perfect. No one of us is better than anyone else. We are all equal as people. And that is what really counts – not what is up front. But that is only for starters. That is where we begin. For we cannot begin to become what we have the potential to become until we realize that, even with our failings and shortcomings, we are fantastic people – God's children. Behind that false front, underneath that mask is a child of God.

I know: we've heard all that before. Pious words, encouraging words, but words nevertheless. And words simply do not do it sometimes. Right? We can all preach a good sermon. Living it is another matter. We can all profess a great faith. Living out that faith is much more difficult. We can all believe that the internal is much more important that the external; but sometimes we are not so sure.

We are constantly bombarded by hucksters selling us their brand of, their formula for success, be it through personal enrichment courses, wearing the right clothes, or even turning to Jesus and having him as our personal Lord and Savior. The solutions to success all seem easy, simple and the thing to do. They are not. The only way we are a success is by being the person God created us to be; not by listening to Madison Avenue – or to anyone else who would like to make us into their own image and likeness. We can't be like someone else. We can only be ourselves.

We can't even be like Jesus. We can learn from him but we cannot be like him. That may sound heretical if not pure hogwash. But I don't think it is. You see, trying to be like someone else prevents us from being and becoming the person God created us as. For what our faith teaches us, what Jesus taught us – and still does through the Scriptures – is that we are to be who we are and not who or what someone else is or what others want us to be.

The Army wants us to be all that we can be in the Army. Well, wherever. The only way we can be all that we can be is by being ourselves and not someone else. Jesus taught us that. He was who he was and no one else. He didn't try to be what society said he should be. He didn't try to be what his disciples wanted him to be. He was himself, no more and no less. So must we. And that's what really counts, now and always.