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Certain words that many companies use in their annual reports—words like ethical, integrity and responsibility—are meant to convey trustworthiness. But research suggests that companies that use such words in annual filings known are often hiding their untrustworthiness.

The study found that use of “trust” words in annual statements was linked with a decreased interest in the stock of the company in question. Basing their findings on 21 words that seek to evoke a sense of trustworthiness, the authors also found that companies whose annual filings included the words tended to pay about $100,000 more in auditing fees than firms without the words.

Companies using trust words were also about 15% more likely to receive a comment letter from the Securities and Exchange Commission asking them to clarify information on their annual report than companies that didn’t use trust words.

One of the researchers wrote, “Companies likely use trust words to project a positive image and better manage information within the annual report, but it seems that no one is really fooled.”

Author Brené Brown was at a book signing where a woman and her husband approached her with books to get autographed. After Brown signed the books, the wife turned to leave and said, “Come on, hon” to her husband. “No,” he replied, “I want to talk with her for a second.”

Uncomfortable, Brown just waited. The man then looked at her and said, “I really love all this stuff you're talking about, this shame, and being perfect, and having to be someone we're not, and having to reach out. It is really powerful. But I never heard you mention anything about men.”

She felt relieved and said: “I don't study men.” He immediately responded, “That's convenient.” Nervously, she asked, “Why convenient?”

“It's convenient you don't talk about men,” he said, “Because when we reach out, when we tell our stories, when we share our shame experiences, we get the emotional s____ beat out of us.”

Brown was about to reply when he added, “Before you say anything about those dads, and those coaches, or about those bosses and mean bully friends, let me explain this to you. My wife and my three daughters, you just signed books for, they would rather see me die on top of my White Horse than see me fall off.” And then he just left.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This story reveals the stresses men face today—the pressure to stay on your “white horse,” to maintain your image of strength and invulnerability, rather than to trust in God’s grace and be vulnerable in Christian community.

In his book The Life We’re Looking For, author Andy Crouch relates the following spiritual prayer experience. While stuck in Chicago’s O’Hare airport on a cold winter night, he needed some exercise, so he tried the following prayer walk experiment:

As I walked, I decided, I would try to take note of each person I passed. I would pay as much attention to each of them as I could … and say to myself as I saw each one, image bearer. I passed a weary looking man in a suit. Image bearer. Right behind him was a woman in a sari. Image bearer. A mother pushed a stroller with a young baby; a young man, presumably the baby’s father, walked next to her, half holding, half dragging a toddler by the hand. Image bearer, image bearer, image bearer, image bearer. A ramp worker walked by in a bulky coat and safety vest. Image bearer.

By the time I reached the corridor where Terminal 1 connects to Terminal 2, I had passed perhaps 200 people, glancing at their faces just long enough to say to myself, image bearer. I had six more concourses to go. ... After about 45 minutes of walking—image bearer, image bearer, image bearer … I was at the most distant gates.

By the end of the walk … I had passed people in every stage of life and health, [many] national and ethnic backgrounds, some traveling together, most seemingly alone. The stories I would never learn behind each of those faces … the possibility and futility each one had no one and would know … carried an emotional and spiritual weight that I can still feel, years later. From time to time, I repeat this exercise on a city street, in a coffee shop, even driving on the highway with faces are just a blur behind a windshield. Image bearer, image bearer, image bearer. It never fails to move me.

For about five dollars you can buy a four-inch plastic bobblehead Jesus that bounces on a metal spring and adheres firmly to the dashboard of your car. One advertisement for this product says you can “stick him where you need forgiveness” and he will “guide you through the valley of gridlock.”

The dashboard Jesus has become a cultural phenomenon. In the song “Plastic Jesus” Billy Idol sings, “With my plastic Jesus, goodbye and I'll go far, with my plastic Jesus sitting on the dashboard of my car.” Paul Newman sang it in the movie Cool Hand Luke. The words begin, “Well, I don’t care if it rains or freezes, long as I have my plastic Jesus sitting on the dashboard of my car.”

To lots of people, Jesus, church, and Christianity are cultural trappings but not life-changing realities. Author Josh McDowell warns that many people today see Jesus “like a plastic statue on a car dashboard—smiling, robed, a halo suspended above his head.” But that superstitious or sentimental view of Jesus is a myth. Jesus of Nazareth was no plastic saint. He’s a real-world kind of Savior.

It’s not important whether you have Jesus on your car’s dashboard, but it’s vital to know he’s living in your heart. He isn’t plastic, he’s powerful. He’s not small, he’s infinite. He’s not a good-luck token. He’s the risen Lord of time and eternity.

You don't have to pack, deal with security lines, or face jet lag in order to show off your vacation pictures on social media. Just fake it! A Nebraska-based business is offering to bolster social media pages with expertly faked photos of the user on vacations they never took. The company, Fake a Vacation, offers packages starting at $19.99 for a service to superimpose the photos of a social media user in front of famous landmarks at popular vacation spots including Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Hawaii, and Walt Disney World.

The company’s ad reads “Make your friends envious of where you were and have them thinking of being where you are. Fake vacation is a perfect Meme for bragging to your friends.” The packages also include some facts about each destination to help the customer concoct the story of their fake vacation.

The company cited a study that suggests more than half of Millennials have lied about taking vacations for reasons ranging from last-minute cancellations, the high price of travel, and the desire for social media recognition.

An investigative report alleges that the New York Police Department routinely abused facial recognition software by submitting photos of celebrity lookalikes. The report from the Georgetown Center on Privacy and Technology noted that celebrity photos are just a portion of the so-called “probe photos” used to generate database hits, which also include stills from surveillance footage, or photos from social media profiles of potential suspects.

The report garnered widespread criticism from various community groups and privacy advocates.

"It doesn’t matter how accurate facial recognition algorithms are if police are putting very subjective, highly edited or just wrong information into their systems," says Clare Garvie, a senior associate at the Center on Privacy and Technology who wrote the report. "They're not going to get good information out. They're not going to get valuable leads. There's a high risk of misidentification. And it violates due process if they're using it and not sharing it with defense attorneys."

The report didn’t focus exclusively on policing in New York City, but also examined similar practices in Maricopa County, Arizona; Washington County, Oregon; and Pinellas County, Florida. Other routine practices included altering existing photos of suspects to make them look more like traditional mugshots, including one case where they pasted a closed mouth from a model photograph.

"These techniques amount to the fabrication of facial identity points: at best an attempt to create information that isn’t there in the first place and at worst introducing evidence that matches someone other than the person being searched for," the report says.

Potential preaching angles: God delights in both right practices and right outcomes, so going about the wrong way to do the right thing is doing the wrong thing. When we take shortcuts, we demonstrate our lack of trust in God’s timing.

As the maxim goes, it’s better to be silent and thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt. There’s at least one hipster-looking guy who will probably, in the future, take that to heart.

The MIT Technology Review recently published an article about a study out of Brandeis University on something called “the hipster effect,” the idea that a group of self-proclaimed nonconformists will eventually coalesce around similar behaviors and styles. It’s a partial explanation for the common idea that many hipster men tend to look alike--often bearded with flannel shirts and knit beanie caps.

After the story ran, editors received an email from an angry reader. He was upset about what he perceived to be unfair generalizations about people in his demographic, but also because he claimed to be the man in the cover photo and said the Review never obtained his permission to use his likeness.

Editor-in-chief Gideon Lichfield and his team quickly contacted Getty Images, the stock photo provider, to ascertain whether the model in the photo had signed a release form authorizing its use. Getty Images confirmed that the model in the photo was a different person than the email complainant. The man responded "Wow, I stand corrected, I guess. I and multiple family members, and a childhood friend pointed it out to me, thought it was a mildly photo-shopped picture of me … Thank you for getting back to me and resolving the issue."

In a tweet, Lichfield summed up the situation: “The guy who'd threatened to sue us for misusing his image wasn't the one in the photo. He'd misidentified himself. All of which just proves the story we ran: Hipsters look so much alike that they can’t even tell themselves apart from each other.”

Potential Preaching Angles: First impressions matter less to God than a thorough examination of the truth. Fools who insist on speaking up often end up proving their critics correct.

In the early 80s, an image campaign began in the city of Atlanta with the hopes of encouraging Atlantans to see their city with pride and hope—despite some of its darker issues of race relations, violence, poverty, and unemployment. The jingle was endearing, if cheesy, chirping birds in the background and all: There's a feeling in the air, that you can't get anywhere … except in Georgia. I taste a thousand yesterdays and I still love the magic ways of Atlanta.

All of it was meant to inspire nostalgia, loyalty, and camaraderie—and to counter all the city's negative images. Those who remember it speak fondly of the "Hello Atlanta!" song's ability to highlight Atlanta's unique brand of urbanism and the pride.

Makes no difference where I go, you're the best hometown I know. Hello, Atlanta. Hello, Georgia. We love you on 11 Alive!

The song served as something of an anthem for the city, so much so that Ira Glass featured it on his program This American Life. He interviewed people who remembered the song. And then he completely burst their unique sense of city-pride by playing for them the exact same song and lyrics with "Milwaukee" or "Calgary" substituted out in chorus and pictures. As it turned out, this "image campaign" was a syndicated campaign that took place in 167 different cities worldwide. There's a feeling in the air, that you can't get anywhere, except … fill in the blank.

The Bible does not give us an image campaign about God's good news. It is not meant to play on a sense of nostalgia for generic people and places. The promise of the gospel is for particular people in particular places. And this good news can be for you today.

Editor's Note: The following illustration could be used as a simple but powerful object lesson. Discount or thrift stores usually carry plenty of cheap vases. The "attractive" vase in the object lesson below could even be made out of plastic; it just has to look "pretty." You can buy an older, ugly vase for the second part of this object lesson. And if it doesn't look "broken" enough, beat it up with a hammer until it looks like the cracked vessel Paul mentions in 2 Corinthians 4:7.

According to Christian counselor Julie Smith Lowe, we must form an accurate self-image based on God's Word, not our culture. Lowe uses the image of two vases—a beautifully painted vase and a cracked, broken vase—to teach a powerful lesson about our identity in Christ. She writes,

Imagine the first vase is beautiful, and it sits perched on a shelf. Its main purpose is to look attractive. In the same way, we also want to look attractive and impressive. We want people to be drawn to our external appearance. We want the world to look at us and say, "Look how successful, beautiful, strong, or smart you are!"

But the Bible paints a different picture. Instead of being a beautiful vase, let's consider a very different vase—a dirty, cracked, ordinary vase. Just like us, this vase also has flaws—struggles, weaknesses, and imperfections. In many ways, this vase doesn't impress us with its appearance. As a matter of fact, it might even seem "weak," broken, and flawed. But there's good news: let's imagine there's a treasure in this vase. And the only way you can see the treasure is when it shines through the cracks and the flaws. In the same way, there's a treasure in those who follow Christ—Christ himself is the treasure that resides in us, the cracked vessel. Christ brings value and meaning to us.

Unfortunately, we often want to hide our weaknesses. We want to rely on our external appearance and performance. So any time we find a crack or hole, we desperately grab for something to try and hide our weaknesses and shortcomings. But of course our external adorning won't last. Eventually it will always fade and then break. Our only hope is to focus on the treasure within us—the presence of Jesus himself.

In their book Veneer , Timothy Willard and Jason Locy argue that contemporary American culture often values image or appearance over depth of character. They write, "Embarrassed by the scars of our humanity, we try to hide our brokenness. We use a veneer to cover ourselves, hoping others will perceive us as having greater worth, as being more beautiful and perfect than we feel inside." As a specific example of this "venner" or image we try to project to other people, they point to the history of a common article of clothing--blue jeans. They observe:

When Levi Strauss first introduced jeans to America, his sales pitch was simple: durable pants for working-class folks. Strauss didn't give much attention to fashion—jeans were a work garment for gold miner in the West. No one really cared what they looked like; they just needed to function.

But over time, things changed. A certain subculture of teens adopted jeans as a symbol of rebellion. They appeared in movies and magazines, worn by Kerouac, Dean, and Brando. They were worn less for their ability to handle a hard day's work and more as the anti-something.

Then, in 1980, a fifteen-year-old Brooke Shields slid on a pair of boots … [and] posed in a pair of Calvin Klein's. With the flash of a camera, designer jeans became a must-have for women.

When Calvin Klein ran his first of many controversial ads, he didn't pay attention to how his jeans held up in the fields; he just cared about how they looked. He understood that people were looking for ways to express themselves, and that if an identity statement could be made with his jeans, more people would buy them. Today, we seldom buy jeans for their durability; we buy them to tell the world something about us. We are a beatnik poet, a rebel without a cause, the girl wanting to impress the boy; our choice of jeans, the cut and color and brand, speaks the language of culture without saying a word …. Whether it is Levis or Diesel, McCafe or Starbucks, Mercedes or Chevy, Nike or Converse, every consumptive choice makes a statement.

In a society that idolizes physical appearance, it's not surprising that many individuals are willing to sacrifice a great deal in order to look better. Usually those sacrifices involve money, time, and physical pain. For Solange Magnano, however, a quest for youth and beauty led to the ultimate sacrifice.

Solange was crowned Miss Argentina in 1994, and parlayed that exposure into a successful modeling career. She maintained both her career and physique for more than a decade, but by 2009 both were showing signs of age. According to Roberto Piazza, a longtime friend, she became obsessed with regaining a youthful body.

In November of 2009, Solange travelled to Buenos Aires to undergo a gluteoplasty—on operation that uses implants to reduce cellulite and produce a firmer bottom. Solange suffered a pulmonary embolism during the routine procedure and was rushed to a nearby hospital, but doctors were unable to save her life. She was 38-years-old, and she left behind a husband and twin 8-year-old boys.

"Solange was a girl who had everything," Roberto Piazza lamented. "She lived the life of a goddess; she was the envy of everybody. Now she is dead because she wanted a slightly firmer behind. She died because of her obsession with beauty."

Mr. Piazza's words sum up more than the tragedy of one woman's obsession with her body. They serve as a fitting epitaph for a society that idolizes men and women like Solange Magnano, consumes them, and ultimately destroys them.

Marian V. Liautaud writes in an article titled "The Skin I'm In”:

One morning as I got ready for work, my husband watched me put on blush and eyeliner. I always get nervous when he hovers like this. Dan's a purist; he thinks I'm prettier without make-up. Later that night, he asked me why I wear it.

"I like wearing make-up because I feel more finished—more put together—when I have on blush and mascara," I explained.

"What do you think would happen if you didn't look put together?" he probed.

"People at work might view me as unprofessional."

Still not satisfied, he asked, "What do you think would happen if they viewed you as unprofessional? Do you think you could lose your job?"

"No, probably not lose my job, but I might miss out on opportunities because I'd go unnoticed."

"Oh, so make-up helps you get noticed."

"I don't wear make-up to get noticed," I rebutted a little more defensively than I'd intended. "It helps me look better, and when I feel like I look the best I can, I have more confidence, which in turn leads to more opportunities." I was getting tired of his questions—and uncomfortable. Still, he persisted.

"Oh, so making yourself look different from what you are gives you confidence." As Dan tried to understand the psychology behind wearing make-up, his questions became needles that poked holes through my logic. Exasperated, I ended our conversation by saying, "I'm annoyed by your questions, but they're making me realize that I don't have this issue sorted out in my mind. I'm going to take our conversation to heart and try to figure this out."

The next day I embarked on a 30-day experiment. Without telling a soul, I committed to wearing no make-up to see what kind of reaction I'd receive from the people in my life. I was sure coworkers would look at me and either judge my unfinished appearance with disapproval—maybe even disgust—or they'd ask me if I was feeling sick.

The first week was the hardest. I avoided making eye contact with people. Every time I saw myself in a mirror, I instinctively reacted with disgust. "You're ugly," I said disgustedly to myself on more than one occasion. I felt so unattractive.

To make up for my insecurity, I decided to go on the offensive. I started to concentrate on smiling as much as I could and initiating conversations with people so I could learn more about them as a way of taking the focus off of me. I desperately wanted to get comfortable in my own skin. But how could I when I felt so ugly?

Somewhere during week two, I began to realize that how I look has nothing to do with me. I had nothing to say in the matter. At conception, God knit me together, weaving the DNA from my mom and dad into a little girl with brown hair and blue eyes. My chin comes from my grandma, unchiseled and prone to doubling, and my nose might be a bit too big for my face. At what point had I started to judge these facts as good or bad? Who convinced me that my looks make me less than enough? And why had I allowed this faulty thinking to continue for most of my life?

At that moment, I decided to stop judging my looks as good or bad and instead begin to accept myself as I am. I'd view my physical appearance neutrally and without judgment. Beauty would become a moot point for me because it had been determined by God. He didn't request my input on how to design me, so I needed to trust that what I look like is as it should be. There's nothing to improve upon. However I look, it is enough.

After my 30-day boycott on make-up, I began sharing my experience with a few close friends. The thought of leaving off lipstick had never occurred to them. Every one of them said they wear make-up because it's fun, it makes them feel feminine, and they feel prettier with make-up than without. I understand all these responses fully and agree wholeheartedly. At the same time, I've experienced such freedom in not wearing make-up, mainly because I feel released from the struggle to be pretty.

The Desert Fathers (a protest movement against worldliness in the early church) spoke of busyness as "moral laziness." Busy-ness can also be an addictive drug, which is why its victims are increasingly referred to as "workaholics." Busyness acts to repress our inner fears and personal anxieties, as we scramble to achieve an enviable image to display to others. We become "outward" people, obsessed with how we appear, rather than "inward" people, reflecting on the meaning of our lives.

Nobody on his deathbed ever said: "I wish I'd spent more time at the office."

In his book Modern Times, Paul Johnson notes that Stalin was short--just five feet, four inches tall. Furthermore, a childhood accident had left his left arm stiff and his hand slightly misshapen. So when the dictator commissioned his portrait, he instructed the artist to paint him from his best angle--from below, a perspective that made Stalin seem to tower over the artist.

To add to the image, Stalin folded his hands over his stomach, making them appear firm and powerful more like the pseudonym he had chosen: Stalin means "man of steel." It is human nature to put ourselves in the best possible light. But spiritual growth cannot come merely by adjusting the angle of view. God's Word is a mirror that shows our true condition.

On a wall near the main entrance to the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, is a portrait with the following inscription: "James Butler Bonham--no picture of him exists. This portrait is of his nephew, Major James Bonham, deceased, who greatly resembled his uncle. It is placed here by the family that people may know the appearance of the man who died for freedom."

No literal portrait of Jesus exists either. But the likeness of the Son who makes us free can be seen in the lives of his true followers.

Annie Dillard, who won a Pulitzer Prize in literature at age 30, has written explicitly about her Christian faith. As a teen, however, she once decided to quit the church because of the hypocrisy of those who came Sunday mornings mainly to show off their clothes. Indignant, she marched into the assistant minister's office.

"He was an experienced, calm man in a three-piece suit," Dillard recalls. "He heard me out and then said, 'You're right, honey, there is a lot of hypocrisy.' " She felt her arguments dissolve. Then the minister loaded her down with books by C.S. Lewis, suggesting she might find them useful for a senior class paper. "This is rather early of you to be quitting the church," he remarked as they shook hands in parting. "I suppose you'll be back soon."

To Dillard's consternation, he was right. After plowing through four of the Lewis volumes, she fell right back in the arms of the church. Her rebellion had lasted one month.

Years ago, there was a master violinist in Europe. He would play in concerts, and he had a magnificent Stradivarius violin, extremely expensive. He would play the Stradivarius violin in concert and everyone would whisper in the crowd, "Listen to the beautiful sounds of the Stradivarius." He would play in churches, and people would say, "Listen to the beautiful sounds of the Stradivarius." He even played before kings and queens, and they, too, would turn to one another and say, "Listen to the beautiful sounds of the Stradivarius." All the glory went to the instrument.

Then one day this master violinist was walking by a pawn shop. He noticed an old, beat-up, worn-out violin. He walked into the pawn shop and asked how much it would cost. The owner of the pawn shop told him the American equivalent of five dollars. He bought the violin, and he took it home. He polished it, and he refined it, and he tuned it, and he retuned it, and he built some character into that violin. Then, when he was to play the greatest performance of his life in a concert hall, he took out the little, five-dollar, worn-out, beat- up violin that he had polished and refined. He put it up to his chin, and he began to play, and everybody in the concert hall whispered, "Listen to the beautiful sounds of the Stradivarius."