More to Pinocchio

There is more to Pinocchio than we like to credit his story with. The hunger to be real, to be human, to somehow achieve the legitimacy of true personhood -- we struggle for the trappings all our days. In high school we dream of entering the real world. Real people can vote; they don't need parents to call the attendance for them. In college, finding it still delayed, we sense it lies around the next corner. Real people don't feast on EasyMac and watch Grey's Anatomy until 4 am. Reality will come after we graduate. After we get a job. Buy a house. Buy a car. Have 2.2 children and a golden retriever. Are you a Christian? Then you will be real when you become "broken," or perhaps when you find a church with "authentic community." But the quickest way to render something false is to give it a label.

Then when are we real? Not when we become real ourselves, but when we discover that God is, and the nature of reality undergoes a profound metamorphosis.