A Faux-Hawk and the Gerber Baby

I have a little "faux-hawk" thing going on with my hair most of the time lately. I'm sure you know it, even if you don't recognize the name. It's the kind of style where your hair basically comes to a sort of point up at the top, although mine is not as extreme as some wear it (I'm still partially respectable). I just kept looking for something different to do, and this is about all that my hair length will allow.

Note that "faux-hawk" rhymes with "mohawk" and is an alternative for those who are too scared to get a real mohawk, don't think that bald sides of the head are very attractive, or don't want to look like a complete rebel. (Wikipedia.org says this about it: "It was a term of derision [in the late 80's], aimed at "outsiders" of the underground who would not commit to the social stigma conveyed by a true mowhawk.")

I know that if I've had the misfortune of being photographed recently, in a few years it's going to be the equivalent of us looking back at a picture of someone with a crop-top or a mullet -- could have been cool at one time, but is now (hopefully) very embarrassing.

I recently looked in the mirror and said to myself, "Self, you don't look totally unlike the Gerber Baby." This thought almost made me mash my hair down on top and stop doing the faux-hawk, but then I tried this "Google" thing and did an image search for the Gerber Baby. Guess what...? I was wrong -- G. B. has a cowlick, but no faux-hawk.

This tends to make me think of the questionable or patently false theology and Scripture inferences I hear in movies and music. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Noah's Ark (an obscure made-for-TV movie; do not rent this stinker unless you want a really good laugh, but it's really so far beyond the pale that it stopped being funny after only a short while), "We Are the World," ("As the Father showed us by turning stones to bread...") that kind of thing.

I also think of Christ-followers who hear bits and pieces of end-times prophecy from others and begin to repeat it because it sounds ominous or it fits in with their observation that we live in a sin-filled world that just can't go on much longer. And these things make me think of my not-so-Gerber-Baby hair: a vague recollection that was wrong -- my hair is actually more like Mr. Heat Miser's.

And of course, I think of the Madeline Murray O'Hare e-mails, the one about NASA discovering a lost day in the past, and many others that are marginally fact-based but are false and certainly have no business being spread, especially by Christians!

Have you ever thought you remembered the Bible saying something about such-and-such, and then speaking about it to someone else in a mildly authoritative tone? One that sounds kind of important but still leaves you a way out just in case you have your facts a wee bit wrong? Like, "Well, I think that the Bible does say somewhere that it's a sin to have long hair." Don't do that! If you're unable to back up your "facts," keep them to yourself until you can. This is frustrating because it can make you feel like you're losing an argument or debate (which you possibly shouldn't be doing anyhow), but it's far, far better to behave as Abraham Lincoln advised: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt."

Or something like that. Wait... was it Mark Twain who said that?

Posted in: Christianity, Life, Rumors, The Bible