When a Ghost is Better than You
Several months ago I read an article that talked about ghostwriters. The author mentioned that after spending “the better part of the past decade in publishing-adjacent roles, I am surprised any time I discover that a personality-driven release was actually written by its author rather than a ghostwriter.”1
Call me naive, but I assumed if someone was listed as the author then that means what it implies: they wrote the book. Guess I was wrong.2
To further prove the point, Prince Harry’s ghostwriter publicly wrote about the struggles of his profession, so the cat’s out of the bag (assuming it was contained in the first place). Just because a book says it’s written by someone doesn’t mean it’s written by them. I suppose the word “author” doesn’t mean what I thought it meant.
Don’t even get me started on artificial intelligence (AI). A while ago, I signed a contract to write an article and found some new verbiage stipulating that my article could not be written with the assistance of AI. In many cases, AI could do a better job than I could. Way faster, much more readable, and without the need for second-guessing and procrastination I find so imperative to my writing process. But I insist on writing things on my own, contract signed or not.
When an Older Person Looks Younger than You
While casually perusing the clothes aisle (in a Salvation Army thrift store no less) my daughter overheard an older woman commenting, “Anytime you see someone who looks too perfect and perky, you know it’s plastic surgery!”
I’m not here to argue the merits and demerits, I’m just here to say what you already know: these measures of botox & plastic surgery make people look young and smooth where they used to look old and wrinkly. If you choose not to take part in such smoothing, you will no doubt look older than surrounding people your age.
What’s the Big Deal?
Look at me lumping botox, ghostwriters, and faithfulness into the same article. The nerve! Am I going to say that in order to be truly faithful you have to abstain from self-beautification (particularly the botox and plastic surgery kinds), write your books without the assistance of a ghostwriter, and stay away from AI?
I am not. In the grand scheme of things, what’s an injection of Botox or an article written by AI?
But there’s an underlying issue I want to address.
It’s About Motive
Sometimes you don’t know your motive—why you do what you do—until you get mad that someone else has done it better.
If you see a person who looks less wrinkly than you, even though she’s ten years older, what does that do to you? Does it make your thoughts and heart contort into a jumbled mess of envy, self-righteousness, and indignation? That’s a heart issue that no amount of age-defying procedures can cure.
When you read an article written by someone who used the assistance of AI or an unnamed contributor, does it make you feel like throwing in the towel of trying because everybody is better and everything is easier for everyone but you? That’s a heart issue that getting on the NYT bestseller list 50 years in a row can never fix.
Why does it matter that someone is better than you?
If I’m consumed with glory and image, maybe that’s a signal from the truth-telling part of myself to the easily deceived part that I haven’t made life all about loving and serving others;
I’ve made life all about me.
How do I look, what do people think,
and who is impressed?
If you want to help and serve people, you won’t be worried about who gets the credit because that’s not what life is about.
If you want to love people, it won’t matter whose skin is better or whose body looks younger because that’s not what life is about.
Two Clarifying Questions
Sometimes questions cut through the junk and reveal our motives. Here are two I like to ask:
1. WHY (are you doing what you’re doing)?
2. WHO (is it for)?
The only cure to these widely varied issues of age-defying procedures and the use of artificial intelligence, ghostwriters, or any other smokescreen of “objects are way less cool than they appear,” is to root your WHY and WHO in the maker of the world and everything in it (yourself included). If I’m faithfully living and working for God’s glory, then my glory won’t matter.
Why do I do what I do? Who am I doing it for? Well, if I’m honest, it’s for a lot of (less-than-stellar) reasons, but I want my why and who to be this:
Whether I eat, drink, write, get Botox or not, climb a mountain, have a health crisis, paint a picture, make dinner, take care of babies, win, or lose: do all to the glory of the God who made me and saved me.3
Why? Because life is all about him. I can be faithful no matter the outcome when I fix my eyes on him and his glory.
“From him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”
Romans 11:36
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