Preposterously Impossible Hypothesis #6: “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”

I have spent a ridiculous amount of time around books in my nearly thirty years on this earth. I don’t think it would be any kind of exaggeration at all to say that I have had some kind of contact with a book every day of my life. Whether you love them, hate them, read them, or use them to level your kitchen table, if they are collecting dust or just plain worn out; books are a major part of our culture and they have played a huge role in my life.

My senior year of high school I worked in the Junior High library logging books into a database for easier checkout. I was responsible for writing a brief synopsis for every book I put my hands on. I wrote a lot of short summaries on those old tomes. Books of every imaginable kind that you might find in a school library—reference, fiction, non-fiction, and autobiographies; everything from the Encyclopedia Britannica to Super Fudge.

During college my love of books, music, and all things entertainment landed me a job in the book department of a local retail chain. Again I found myself neck deep in books of all imaginable kinds. I learned two very important things during my time as a person charged with connecting people and the books they think they might want.

First, but not what I want to discuss today, most people who love books think they are smarter than everyone else but have no idea what they are talking about the vast majority of the time. Second, you can indeed judge a book by its cover.

I know that the origin of this idiom has to do with not passing judgment on the quality, condition, or content of a person based solely on appearances. That is mostly a good principle to live by. In fact, it is soundly biblical. We are not to set ourselves as judge over anyone.

Let’s turn the page for a second. Flip this thing over to the back cover and see what’s really going on. Any book you pick up off the store shelf today will have a jacket or a back cover that gives a synopsis of the contents within the book itself. For some books the summary is entirely unnecessary. For example, romance novels. Gag!

Romance novels are probably the most identifiable books on the market. The cover of every one of them is exactly the same. Super-Buff-Guy with delts on pecks and traps on his abs, is either shirtless, or nearly shirtless, and is holding some equally scantily clad tart with full bosom and lust filled eyes in some kind of dramatic embrace. Why do they all have nearly identical covers? Well, because they all offer nearly the exact same thing—shallow plots, vicarious scenarios, and tangled morality. The cover for these romance novels is an unspoken promise made to those thinking to buy the book.

Now flip your life over. Check out your cover. When somebody looks at you what do they see? Not just the short little blurb you’ve thought up to try to impress people into accepting you. What does the way you present yourself say about who you are? Do people see you, your designer jeans, and over done t-shirt and jump to some conclusion about you? Do people hear you speak or see how you treat your friends and get a realistic impression of who you really are? Is the person you are showing everyone on a daily basis the real you or is it a flimsy cover—a shallow jacket hiding the awesome person inside? You see, you really can judge a book by its cover, and people will everyday. What’s on your cover?