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They want to put cheese on my head. 

The students of Sojourn Youth want to know how many pieces of cheese will fit on my bald head. Will I play along? Probably so - if they remain faithful to attending until the end of the school year. 

What I am using to provoke gospel faithfulness is considered a health crisis in other cultures. Last month, the President of South Korea publicly asked the question whether the government should fund hair treatment. After all, young people in that country treat thinning hair as a matter of life and death, much less a matter of public health!

I cherish the 5 years that I lived in Seoul. One thing that would strike us Westerners odd, is their culture's facination with beauty. You cannot swing a dead cat without hitting a skin care shop! Appearances are important in all corners of the earth, but there is a point in which the facination becomes unhealthy, even ungodly. Psalm 103 reminds us:

15 The life of mortals is like grass,
    they flourish like a flower of the field;
16 the wind blows over it and it is gone,
    and its place remembers it no more.

The Proverbs also teaches us that, "charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised." (Prov 31:30)

I have found that being bald is an absolute refreshment! There is less time and attention given to ordering the hairs on my head. However, vanity can strike the bald, as well as the beautiful. Vanity lurks at our hearts, whomever we are.

We must see it for what it is, and put it in its proper place - subjection to the Lord! By way of measurement, you can ask yourself what impact would your appearance have - if moderately degraded - on your ability to share the gospel with a lost world. How would it impact your ability to disciple others inside the church? How would it impact your love for the Lord?

Your appearance should not distract from your public witness to the gospel, but it also should not be an invitation for sin and vanity to creep into your heart and disrupt your humility before an almighty creator-God!

Find the balance, fight the good fight against encroaching vanity, and give glory to God in all things.