You're 17 and you need a car. So you buy a junker for a couple hundred bucks. With a little body putty and some paint it looks like a new car. What a deal!

Unfortunately, it's not. The tires are shot. So is the muffler. (The car sounds like a tank.) Then what? Shocks. Brakes. Battery. You thought new paint would hide the familiar rattles, creaks, and shudders. It didn't. You've still got a junker.

You're a junker

The world treats you like a junker. Ads say you are one tube of toothpaste, one pair of sneakers, one diet, one exercise machine, one soft drink, one hair cut away from being cool, attractive, confident, impressive, popular, important. With the right "fix," you can feel good about yourself.

Don't be fooled. Like that junker car, your need for fixing never ends. And those fixes don't make you a better person. They can't change the fact that we are all human junkers: insecure, self-centered, superficial-sinful.

When you think about it, that's depressing. That's why some kids kill themselves. Others focus on their image rather than who they are. Some try to convince themselves they're okay because they need less fixing than others.

Are those really our choices when it comes to self-image-despair or dishonesty?

No you're not

God gives us another way to look at ourselves through baptism: "We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life" (Romans 6:4).

Baptism is based on the truth that all of us are junkers beyond fixing, fit only to be discarded on the scrap heap.

But God rescued us. His Son towed our sins to the cross where, as our substitute, he let the Father destroy our sins by crushing him. Baptism connects us to that divine demolition. God took our unfixable problem and got rid of it. He then replaced it with the righteousness of his Son, giving us new identities as God's sin-free, guilt-forgiven, dearly-loved children.

The world tells us we have to keep striving and paying for a positive self-image. Yet, God gives us one-free-through baptism. As baptized believers, when the Father looks at us, he sees Christ. He sees someone perfect, someone special, someone he will never abandon.

There is more. Through baptism Christ not only gives us a new identity, but he also lives in us. With the unlimited power of Christ living in us as we battle temptation, we can do more than we could ever imagine.

You used to be a junker. But God changed all that. Through baptism you are a brand-new, better-than-you-could-ever-dream, top-of-the-line model. That's a real deal!