I now have an avatar. I gave in to the new Facebook craze a few days and created my own avatar. Well, to be accurate, my eldest created my avatar. I started it, but then I had to make decisions about things I knew nothing about—like what I looked like. I was expected to pick skin tone, hair color—all kinds of attributes with very fine lines of difference between the choices. I just handed my phone to Darcie and said, “here, you do it.” So she did. Graciously. There is a rumor that you can add in age lines and other signs of wear and tear. My daughter kindly skipped that step, if its even true. I have to say, for a cartoon figure, it represents pretty well.
Now, that whole endeavor has gotten me thinking. There is a digital image of me enshrined in the digital world, and I expect it will be there for as long as the internet lasts. In its own way immortal. My avatar. Except . . . It’s not really my avatar, because it only resembles me on the surface (and only superficially at that). It’s more of a computerized caricature than the embodiment of who I am, which is the true definition of the word. No one is going to look at that image and think, Aha! Now I know exactly who this person is and what he is all about! At least, I hope not.
That realization led me to another. I am myself an avatar, or I am supposed to be anyway. Paul said as much in the letter he wrote to the church in Ephesus: “Therefore, be imitators of Christ, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” (Ephesians 5:1, 2). “For we are his workmanship . . .” (Ephesians 2:10). He repeated the idea when he wrote to the Philippians, telling them to, “have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 25). Our words, our teachings, are to reflect the words and teachings of Christ and of the Father (Isaiah 8:20). Jesus said once, “if you have seen me, you have seen my Father” (John 14:9). Jesus was (is!) the embodiment, the essence of his Father, and our calling is to be the same. We are to live so that when the world sees us, hears us, observes the good we are doing, they naturally recognize that it comes from Heaven and not from ourselves (Matthew 5:16).
I confess, this is a daunting idea. I’m honestly not a very good avatar of the Father or of Christ. I’m barely even a caricature. It’s a high calling, and I know I am falling short all the time. But I also know it’s, “not I but Christ who lives in me” (Galations 2:20) who is transforming me and changing me from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18). I know I have been made perfect by the same Power that is growing me into his likeness, creating me to be an avatar, day by day (Hebrews 10:14). That will have to be enough. My Facebook avatar didn’t create itself; I have my eldest daughter to thank for that. I am also not self-created; I have been made new, I AM BEING MADE new, every day. And that will have to satisfy.
