O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained: What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

"What don’t you like about yourself?" The first time I watched the television show "Nip/Tuck" during a particularly stubborn bit of insomnia, I was hooked. The second season, which started a week ago, is tawdry and so far a disappointment. But the first season was haunting because the central issue of the series is a philosophical problem that is part of the deep spiritual questions in our culture and age.

"What don’t you like about yourself?" is the question that the two central characters of the series ask time and time again throughout the shows. They are plastic surgeons and ask their patients this question at the beginning of every consultation portrayed in the fictional drama. And spoken from the lips of doctors who specialize in enhancing appearance, the question, "What don’t you like about yourself?" could be the culture’s mantra. Changing appearance is commonplace, and in many instances extraordinarily beneficial. Disfigurements from births, accidents, and burns can be soothed, and in some instances, almost completely overcome. We can also change our appearance for cosmetic reasons through stomach-stapling, liposuction, removing crow’s feet from eyes, and the enlargement or shrinkage of almost any body part. The television show, "The Swan," a beauty pageant for women who willingly undergo a complete body renovation makes Michael Jackson just a normal, everyday person, just a symbol of the manner in which plastic and cosmetic surgeries are routine parts of our lives. One’s appearance as it naturally changes over time is no longer a permanent feature of one’s life.

Of course, it never was. Men and women throughout history have tried to enhance their personal appearance based upon the norms of beauty and desirability of the culture. We put makeup on and stunt the growth of hair on the head through haircuts, and maybe the prevalence of it makes it more obsessive but such notions are not unique. The ancient Egyptian went so far as to try and preserve the body after death through mummification, and some Christian sects oppose organ donation because of the need to have a "whole body" when the resurrection of the dead occurs at the end of time! History proves that the old saying. "Beauty is only skin deep," was not a proverb that humanity ever really held as being true. There have always been attempts to alter outward appearance to be as attractive as we wistfully idealize the essence of a human being to be.

I even officiated at a Memorial Service for a woman who died of liposuction. She sacrificed her life for her appearance!, and that’s when I knew there was a spiritual element about all of this.

That’s why Nip/Tuck captured my spiritual curiosity. The plastic surgeons don’t ask, "What do you want to you change about yourself?" which would be the plastic surgeon’s version of the question of one’s self-esteem! The question they ask concerns both appearance and essence at the same time. It is a question with a both a surface, superficial level, and a deeper, spiritual one: "What don’t you like about yourself?" And the companion spiritual question that no plastic surgeon can really help you with: "What don’t you like about yourself that you can’t change?"

We tend not to want to confront the part of ourselves that we don’t like and know we cannot change. Our culture of self-esteem promises that the deep regions inside of the self are like the outside; that they can change readily like a new nose job, or that with a few nips and tucks to the inner mistakes we make in our thoughts and emotions, we can adjust our way to health and wholeness.

The issue in which the television series Nip/Tuck embroils itself is the old philosophical and metaphysical issue of essence and appearance. That there are two distinct dimensions of anything that exists: its appearance, what it looks like on the outside, and its essence, what it really is and means on the inside. It is derived from Plato’s notion that everything that exists, that appears to us, has some ideal that it represents, an essence in an idealized realm that really is what that object is and means. Orthodox religion picked up on this and declared that whatever appears to be the case with a human being, the essence of an individual is inherently sinful. This is an essence that cannot be changed. You may dress yourself up in fine cloth, nip or tuck your appearance in a thousand and one ways, but your essence is depraved and does not alter. Appearance conceals essence.

In much of the last century and a half liberal religion has maintained this dichotomy, just reversed it. Outward appearance reveals essence. It makes no difference what religion or irreligion you hold in your heart. You are what you do. It is found in our spiritual forebear Thomas Jefferson, who said his religion "is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one." It is found to this day in our contemporary declaration "deeds not creeds," a homage both to our disdain for conforming statements of belief that impede themselves on an individual’s relationship with God, and our declaration that the essence of one’s religion is found in the appearance of one’s acts. Appearance reveals essence.

But what if created existence is murkier than either of these? What if appearance and essence are not dichotomies, but compliments? That is, that both appearance and essence reveal and conceal. To traditional orthodox religion appearance conceals our depraved essence. To traditional liberal religion appearance reveals our good essence. But, you see, both are absolutistic, and existence is more a "maybe" than a singular certainty of any kind. What is man, that thou art mindful of him? What if human religious beliefs, our essence, and human acts, our appearance, both reveal and conceal?

If that is the case then our adversary is thinking that either appearance or essence is singular, monolithic, and absolutely good or evil. Our adversary is our fear that divine and human creation is more complex than what we can grasp and explain! That is, that plastic surgery that changes appearance can reveal parts of the essence of someone that remained concealed by their previous appearance. Newfound beauty could unlock inner beauty that had remained concealed, or inner conceit too! And a little plastic surgery may enhance the unique appearance of someone in such a way as to compliment their inner individuality, but too much plastic surgery makes everyone begin to look the same! This is the quandary of the appearance and essence dichotomy. Both our appearance, in religion what we do, and our essence, in religion what we believe, reveal and conceal!

It’s as true in the television series as it is in real life. Individuals’ appearances become "more beautiful," but that is a mixed bag in terms of their inner life. Changes to essence are both revealed and concealed even more, and they results are mixed. And with some of the individuals who come back for more and more botox and facelifts, they begin to lose their unique beauty and begin to look more aged than they are. The very thing they sought to enhance, their appearance of youth and beauty and their essence of youth and beauty, comes to elude them even more! I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.

The good act we do reveals the way human beings creatively shape existence, but it also conceals the reality that the good act contains the seed of the evil the act is aimed at overcoming. This is a "tragically realistic" understanding of human nature and existence that has been largely lost on our time. Human acts are creative, so they reveal and they conceal, like all of creation. The vicious despot Saddam Hussein, who gassed his own people and was a conduit for terrorism, is unseated, which is a good; but he is unseated using the very violence that his regime represented, the seed of the evil the act is aimed at overcoming. Democracy has a chance in a region of the world where if it takes hold, can revolutionize human rights, the rights of minorities, the rights of free speech and free assembly, a good; but it has been imported there by suppressing the rights democracy exhibits and stands for, both there and here, the seed of the evil the act is aimed at overcoming. This is the paradox of the human condition, its "tragic realism."

Plastic surgery can make you young and beautiful? Appearance and essence. Plastic surgery can hide your age from you and others? It reveals and conceals the paradox of the human condition.

What don’t you like about yourself? It is both a question of self-esteem, the part of our appearance and our essence that can be changed, and a spiritual question, the part of creation that cannot be changed. There is both a spirit of possibility in change, and a spirit of self-loathing in desiring to change too much or what can’t be changed to our satisfaction. The orthodox religious response has been to point out that the appearance of the good acts of men and women conceals the true essence of human nature to be its absolute and unchanging depravity. The liberal religious response over the past century and a half has been to point out that the appearance of the good act reveals the essence of human nature to be its absolute and unchanging goodness. I think we need be more realistic than either of these. Some plastic surgery can beautify and bring out beauty within that had long remained concealed. Some plastic surgery can beautify and bring out conceit that had no reason to appear before. Some plastic surgery gives a person a new life, while some plastic surgery takes the only life they have!

Maybe the grand diversity of the appearances of things in this world – the many colors, the multiplicity of shapes, the endless kinds of angularities, the boundless and infinite roundness of appearances - that is, creation’s liberalness, the unique diversity of created appearances is what marks creation as divine.

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? Unique, both changing and unchanging, an appearance and essence that reveals and conceals capacities for both good and evil; yet what makes human being part of God and God’s great creation is not a sameness of beauty or goodness or sin, an absoluteness, but the creative individuality that characterizes all souls.

AMEN.