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If the heart is the spring from which all the issues of life proceed, surely the face is where this fountain is most clearly seen. Our faces are the single greatest proof we have a soul. Indeed, being made in the image of God, our faces are the finest testimony to the reality of the Divine. Not that we are gods ourselves, but that we bear the image of our immaterial Creator most clearly in our faces. Faces tell us that our God intends for us to shine. This article will explore the wonder of faces and the tragic loss of covering them with masks. My goal is not to be contentious but to draw our attention to the value of our visages that we might better understand the price we’re being asked to pay. A doctor may be thoroughly obligated to amputate a gangrenous leg, but woe to the society that doesn’t recognize the loss!

Our faces identify us like no other physical feature. For decades, the gold standard of identification was the fingerprint. We were constantly reminded of the exclusive nature of those swirly lines at the end of every finger. But now we understand how crude that identifier was. What our eyes have long-since recognized our smartphones can finally process – the incredible uniqueness of the human face! Photo I.D.s don’t show our hands, legs, or torsos, they show our faces because that is where our uniqueness is most fully on display. When you think about someone, it’s usually the face that comes to mind. In this regard, the body is little more than a vehicle to move the face around. How many of us have come up behind a stranger whom we thought was a friend because of the likeness of their clothes or body type, only to realize in an instant we had been mistaken, as they turned their face around? What couldn’t be discerned in other things was clarified by their face. We know one another by our faces. 

Faces silently communicate. The ever-increasing number of emojis on our mobile devices confirms the communicative power of faces. Entire thoughts are communicated by expressions – even on little emoji faces. Those who are well acquainted can communicate volumes to each other from across a crowded room with just a look. It’s as though the face has another language all its own. And of all the expressions of the face, none is quite so lovely as a smile, that radiant, transforming alteration of the face from happiness or joy. Here the damage done by masks is most severe, for though a smile might be guessed at by a twinkling in the eyes, without the mouth confirming it, there’s just no guarantee. Without full faces, the world is a little darker, a little more colorless and drearier to behold. 

The face is often used to represent the whole person in Scripture. We understand from the psalmist’s words that when God says “seek My face” He means to seek Him wholly. The Barocha – that ancient benediction given to Moses by God Himself – teaches us that the entirety of all God’s blessings can be summed up in having His “face shine upon” us. (Num 6:25-26) And though Jesus took on an entire human body when He came in the likeness of men, it is written by Paul that the light of the glory of God was revealed to us in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor. 4:6) I saw a Tweet from a pastor the other day suggesting that “if Jesus could veil His nature out of love for the world, surely we can wear a mask out of love for our neighbor.” But this misses the point of Jesus’s coming entirely! He didn’t come to veil His identity but to display it. “If you have seen Me,” He says to Phillip, “you’ve seen the Father.” (John 14:9) Revelation was his mission, not concealment.

And what was His revelation? Not self-protection, but exposure to the point of death. This is the Father we see in the face of Jesus Christ. But some will say, “No, my mask isn’t to protect me, it’s to protect you; I’m being loving by wearing a mask!” 

“Really? Are you sick? If so, then why are you walking around in public?” 

“Well, I don’t know that I’m sick, but I could be, so I’m protecting you.” 

“You’re protecting me from an illness you might have, but don’t know because it’s effects are so slight you can’t tell you have it?” 

And is this really the prescription our God has given us in such circumstances? Was it not the leprous one alone who was isolated by the law of God, and not the entire congregation of Israel? What nation on earth has quarantined the healthy for fear they “might” be sick, until today? And make no mistake, masks are mobile quarantines. They are isolation worn while mingling. Show me the studies before 2020 that proved the efficacy of masks and I’ll understand the mass incarceration of our faces. But you can’t because they don’t exist. The medical community has always known the brute and limited protection that they provide – and then only when the highest quality of masks are used and the strictest of protocols adhered to, not the grossly contaminated swaths of cloth we wear a dozen times, after touching them with our dirty fingers throughout the day. No, the veiling of our souls is far too high a price to pay when the benefits have not been proven!

I can’t help feeling a little like a robber as I slide my mask up over my face and enter my local Target. And once inside I feel as though I’ve stumbled into an operating room without a patient. Expressionless heads wander by me, their covered faces reminding me that one of us just might be a plague. Surely the wisdom of our heavenly Father was wiser than the CDC when He commanded that the sick alone be separated. And when He sent His Son into the world His love ran toward the sick and touched the leper’s skin. He entered a world so deeply diseased not just to show us how to live but to die that He might free those “who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” (Heb. 2:15) And right now our nation and the world are gripped with the bondage of the fear of death, mainly from a campaign of lies and misinformation, but also from a nagging sense of guilt. Should not we, of all the inhabitants of the earth, be those whose faces shine, that the world might see the light of Him who has overcome death and promised us life beyond the grave? Should we not be like those of whom the psalmist wrote, “they looked to Him and were radiant, and their faces were not ashamed.”? (Psa. 34:5) Should not we who follow Him who conquered death seek to spur a courage in our fellow men? Oh, Lord, please let it be!