I was composing a funny blog entry in my mind today. The premise was that I’d pretend to come clean with you, and admit that I’m not Lars Walker, Norwegian Avoidant has-been author, but Dwight Krupinsky, an insurance adjustor from Spokane with a wife and kids, who’s created this false identity for some reason I never entirely worked out.

It came to nothing, but I had identity on my mind.

Then I stopped for groceries after work, and used my credit card at checkout. I have an old credit card from a certain issuing bank, and it features a picture of me. The bank came up with the picture-on-the card gimmick on the theory that a card with the owner’s picture would be harder to use fraudulently (this was when a lot fewer people had internet access). I don’t think they’ve pushed the program for years, but every time they replace my card, it still has the picture.

It’s actually become counterproductive.

Because I don’t look a whole lot like that picture anymore. The guy in the picture is about 50 lbs. lighter than I am, and his hair and beard are brown, while mine are gray. The clerk at the store in fact checked my signature more carefully than she ordinarily would have, because she suspected I was impersonating L. Walker.

Aside from the laughability of the very idea of anybody wanting to impersonate me, I can think of a couple morals I might draw from that experience.

But because I don’t want to spend the whole evening working on this post, I’ll concentrate on one.

In my opinion, one of the most profound books ever written is Dr. Seuss’ The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.

This is a story (for those of you who missed a well-rounded education) about a boy who tries to take his hat off in the presence of the king, but can’t, because a new hat magically appears each time he removes the last one. Toward the end he’s desperately removing hat after hat as they drag him off to execution, and the hats gradually become finer and more expensive. They begin to have fancy feathers and jewels on them, in increasing numbers. I won’t spoil the ending.

It seems to me this is a parable of Christian life. Day by day, through repentance and forgiveness, we put off the old hat of sin (self). Unfortunately, there’s a new hat right underneath. So day by day we have to go on taking hats off. It seems futile. It seems pointless. But gradually, our sin-self is changed into a new creature (there are theological problems with this picture, especially if you’re a Lutheran, but I think we can all grant that it holds true in terms of personal experience).

Unfortunately, the story works just as well as a Freudian parable, in which the hat once again represents the self, but the hat removal stands for the process of analysis. Gradually (in theory) the self changes, matures and is renewed through increased self-understanding.

So it all depends on how you interpret the magic in the story. Is the new self something we create out of our own inner goodness, or does it come from grace that works on us from outside ourselves?

I know what I think.

Can’t speak for Dwight Krupinsky, though.