Kate's New "Do": Pop Rebirth - Christianity Today

I stopped by the food market on a snowy evening last week. When I found what I came for, I joined other customers in the 10-items-or-less check-out line. While waiting my turn, I noted the racks of gossip magazines and tabloids that hedged us in on either side.

There was no Foreign Policy Digest, Atlantic Monthly, or Harvard Business Review on those racks. (Oh, the shock!) Rather, the subject material was all about rumor, scandal, and the social silliness of celebrities.

While I never buy these magazines (or admit doing so), it is hard to muffle one’s curiosity as to what’s behind those covers. After all, who wouldn’t want to know about how to lose 50 pounds in one week without dieting and why Brad hit that photographer and where Tom and Katie went on their vacation? The publishers of these pieces know us rather well. They know that nosiness often trumps propriety. We like knowing other peoples’ secrets.

I was doing rather well at ignoring all this stuff until I saw the cover of People magazine. Its cover featured a photo of Kate Gosselin—she of the famed Jon and Kate reality TV show. Kate, along with her soon-to-be-divorced husband is the mother of eight children, and she has become a professional celebrity.

The Kate Gosselin on the front cover of People is a very attractive woman. And I think I know why. Before her photo-shoot, she spent 20 hours getting her hair done (with extensions, whatever that means) and her face newly made up (some meanies said “lifted up”). Who watched her eight children during all these hours is not mentioned.

The result of Ms. Gosselin’s 20 hours in the makeup studio is impressive, and the photo is a witness to this. Of course, if a true professional spent that many hours working on my lined face and thinning hair, I can see how people might put me in a class with George Clooney. Well, maybe it would take 30 hours.

Beneath Ms. Gosselin’s new beautiful face on the cover were these words: “I’m starting over!”

For the first time in my life (honestly!) I bought the magazine. I wanted to know what “starting over” meant to Kate Gosselin. And it turned out that starting over meant exactly what the front cover depicted: new face, new hair lead to a new life.

This would align with my suspicions about celebrityism: it’s mostly about what one looks like … at surface level. Want more attention, more publicity, more fame? Just alter your appearance, buy new clothes, tell the paparazzi where you can be found and shout to the world, “I’m starting over.” That should do it.

Actually, the core of the starting over idea is a concept that is very biblical. It is found in the earliest chapters of Scripture after humanity squandered most its privilege to enjoy an intimate connection with God. Biblical people came to describe the act of starting over with words like redemption or salvation or conversion. These words suggested a way back from separation from God: a new relationship, an authentic new life. Paul called it a new creation.

I think the biblical invitation to start over, to opt for life-change, is the most hopeful message the Bible offers. When a person is broken, heart-sick, utterly down for the count, the words, “Come unto me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest” can be of incalculable value, almost irresistible.

The idea of a start-over is most beautifully put in the book of Ezekiel: God says, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone, and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws” (Ezek. 36:25ff).

Perhaps in all of the Scripture, no story illustrates starting over more powerfully than Jesus’ description of a thoroughly wasted Prodigal Son falling into the arms of a patiently waiting father and saying , in effect, “I’d give anything to come home and start over.” The Father accepts this declaration and the new start becomes a realtiy.

The biblical notion of starting over is not cheaply obtained, as Dietrich Bonheoffer reminded us. It is not as simple as getting a new hair-do or even saying, like a ball player finally admitting to using steroids, “Now that I finally admitted the truth, let’s move on.” The Bible connects the idea of starting over with the cross and the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. There is nothing cheap about this. A sinless One dies that many sinners, such as myself, might be offered the chance to start over and be given new life by the transforming love of God.

This kind of starting over is about something far, far deeper than clothes and face-lifts. Ezekiel stated it clearly: starting over begins at the core of the soul, that interior space where the deepest choices and convictions are formed. If that part of us is not altered, then everything on the surface—face and hair included—leaves a person substantially the same.

And might I add my own conviction, one I have learned over the years. Starting over—the biblical way—is not necessarily a one-time event. Frankly, I start over just about every day. On the wall of my shower are these words, “Today I resolve to revisit the cross and reaffirm my conversion.” They remind me of the words of the old Puritan, Thomas Shepherd: “Be converted and always converting.”

But there is one more thing about starting over to say in this limited space. As biblical people we can talk all we want about the genius of starting over (conversion, redemption, salvation), but what if—after all the words are said—there is no safe place for a person to declare his wish to start over and to receive the support he needs.

Everyone who knows the story of the Prodigal Son recognizes the churlish “elder brother” who was pretty much against start-overs and said so. Had the choice been left to him, the Prodigal would have been told to return to the pig sty.

The God who initiated the redeeming idea of start-overs said he would choose to remember one’s sins no more. Choose! Could this mean that he expects us to do the same for one another? To choose to maintain a redemptive fellowship—a place where start-overs are welcomed and celebrated. The Elder brother would not be comfortable in such a place.

Wherever we get this biblical idea of a start-over right, a crowd usually gathers.

These thoughts: the result of a visit to the food market and Kate Gosselin’s new “do.”

Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership and lives in New Hampshire.