A couple of years ago, before opening to the public, a new high-end shoe store in an upscale Los Angeles shopping district hosted a special event for fashion critics and social media starlets. New stores often wine-and-dine popular influencers for the purpose of generating buzz and building momentum in preparation for grand opening.
The host of this swanky soiree was none other than Bruno Palessi, an up-and-coming designer whose stunning stiletto heels had been all the rage on Instagram in the months prior to the event. He claimed his new store, Palessi, catered to elegant elites, and the decor – from the red carpet and the mini-runway to the crystal shelves and gallery lighting – screamed luxury.
The VIP guests couldn’t get enough. They paid $600 for leopard print sneakers and up to $1,800 for five-inch heels. When the press asked for comments, the socialites offered their highest praise:
“Palessi is just such high quality, high fashion, taking your shoe game up to the next level…It looks really well made.”
“It’s just stunning. Elegant, sophisticated and versatile.”
“I would pay $400, $500. People are going to be like, ‘Where did you get those? Those are amazing’.”
The event was a tremendous success on two fronts: first as a momentum boost for a brand new store, and second as a social experiment that exposed our culture’s absurd materialism.
Because it was all a lie. There was no grand opening. There were no designer shoes. The VIP influencers were real, but they weren’t there to see the new Palessi store they heard about on Instagram, because Bruno Palessi doesn’t have an Instagram because Bruno Palessi doesn’t exist. And neither does his store.
The shoes were anything but high-end; they were from Payless ShoeSource. In fact, Payless sponsored the whole event to prove a point: in the right part of town, under the right kind of lights, in the hands of the right kind of people, Payless (aka Palessi) shoes are every bit as desirable as the most luxurious designer footwear in the world.
Once the ruse was revealed, some of the shocked VIPs ate crow and promised to promote Payless’ discount shoes to their online followers.
One defining characteristic of life in the 21st Century is our struggle to discern what’s real. We’ve become so accustomed to being fooled by fake news, fake politicians, fake stories, and fake people that we’ve grown more cynical than ever. We’re so jaded that we are immediately suspicious of anything that looks too shiny, new, beautiful, or good.
See those pretty people on the magazine cover? It’s just Photoshop.
See that politician who seems cool and has great ideas? She’s just like the rest of them.
See that megachurch with the celebrity preacher? It’s just another religious con.
See that news story about the Deep State on Fox News? It’s just conservative propaganda.
See that news story about climate change on CNN? It’s just liberal propaganda.
I could be wrong, but I think the lethal combination of 24 hour news and social media enables much of our cynical thinking. In a recent thread of tweets, posted on a Tuesday, Twitter user @theshrillest illustrated perfectly how the click-starved media work to confuse and misinform the masses:
Headline #1: Today is Friday.
Headline #2: The Case for Today Being Friday
Headline #3: People Are Saying Today Isn’t Friday. Here’s Why They’re Wrong.
Headline #4: The Scientific Consensus Is That Today Isn’t Friday. But That’s Changing.
Headline #5: Why Acting Like Today Isn’t Friday Is Everything That’s Wrong with America
Headline #6: The Media Told Us Today Isn’t Friday. That’s How We Got Donald Trump.
Replace the Tuesday/Friday “controversy” with just about any other issue – gun control, climate change, voter fraud, immigration, gender fluidity, or sexuality – and you can find the news media employing the same deceptive pattern. Because when the end-game is profitability and not the Truth, well – nothing makes money like controversy, fear, and sex. And if they can keep us turned on, or turning on each other, hating each other, or afraid of each other, they’ve got us right where they want us.
When you see this happening, it’s tempting to feel hopeless. How are we ever supposed to know the difference between what’s real and what’s not? Why even try to make that distinction if we’re probably going to fail and look stupid in the process?
This way of thinking can easily creep into your spiritual life as well.
That time you thought you felt God’s presence? You were just being emotional.
That time you said, “We’re gonna miss him, but we’ll see him in heaven one day”? That’s just what you say when someone dies.
That time you felt a sudden nudge in your heart to help the homeless guy on the street? You just did it to feel good about yourself.
When it comes down to you and God, how do you know what’s real and what’s not? In his book Knowing Christ Today, Dallas Willard criticizes our culture’s deeply cynical treatment of Christianity. He claims that western academia has, without any real knowledge of our faith, falsely determined that to be a Christian is to be disconnected from reality:
“That approach is often combined today with the thought that the basic teachings of Christianity – the existence of a personal God, his intervention and direction in human affairs, the spiritual nature of human beings, the fundamental reliability of the Bible and the central teachings of the church…have been discovered to be false or without credible evidence. In short, Christianity has been ‘found out,’ and it is at best only a set of humanly contrived myths and traditions, if not an outright fraud.”
Our claim as Christians isn’t that we’ve got it all right, and every other religion has it all wrong. A better way of putting it is that every world religion is a copy of a copy. Even the many forms and denominations of institutional Christianity are copies of a copy.
Copies aren’t perfect representations of the original. Copies of copies are even less accurate. But that’s not the point. The point is that we all agree there is an Original to be copied. Even agnostics and many atheists agree on this point, and so we share a metaphysical understanding of reality. As Roger Olsen writes,
“At the heart of every metaphysic, every vision of ultimate reality, lies something absolute, something believed to be the source and/or connecting center of all that is. By absolute, here is meant only ‘unsurpassable’ in terms of explanatory power; it is whatever sustains, controls, governs, or connects everything else. To reject such an absolute, ultimate reality is to reject metaphysics entirely. Even strict pluralists—people who believe all reality is but a collection of individual things without any absolute or ultimate reality connecting them—believe in some force or principle such as “creativity” or just ‘energy.’ The reason metaphysics is ultimately unavoidable is due to the persistent pressing questions of all inquiring minds: ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ and ‘What is the meaning of existence?’ Only a nihilist can answer with a firm denial of source or purpose.”
A cynic looks at the copies and says, “Everything is fake.” But deep down, we know that if copies exist, then so must the Original.
Much about this year feels fake, and it’s hard to know what’s real. But what if, hidden deep underneath all our superficialities, there is something – and Someone – worthy of your trust?
For Christians, that’s Jesus. In 2 Corinthians 4:6, Paul wrote, “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
