Many things look good on a post card. Cities, hair and teeth gleam when treated to a professional lens. What one needs is to get up close and personal, to see it for oneself. The trouble with the first-hand method of observation is that there is an inevitable loss of nobility – the shine always comes off. It takes years of first-hand experience to realize that media feeds us a fake, that people with shiny teeth often have disappointing personalities, that nothing is really as good as it looks in a photograph. It has to do with the inescapable problem of idolatry and the endless production of things and personas that are said to be “the real deal.” Christians, who…