Sell - Frog in a Tuxedo

It's like old times.  I sold a possession the other day - without even trying.  It was at school and I didn't have a camera handy, so all I could do was take a photo with my cell phone.  I would post that picture here, but there's a problem: I'm an old guy who can't figure out how to get the picture from the phone onto the computer (at least not without having to pay for some service I can't afford).

So here's a pic of the pic on my phone:

It's a ceramic piece I painted as a teenager: a frog wearing a top hat and tuxedo. I looked on the bottom where my name and the year were scratched into the clay:  1982.  It's 30 years old!  The idea that my childhood was 3 decades ago still freaks me out.

One of my students offered me $5.00 for it.  He had been talking about it for months and then showed up with the cash out of the blue. 

I don't remember what attracted me to this piece thirty years ago (maybe it reminded me of how as kids we used to dress up toads ... in tiny top hats and capes), but over time it came to represent something I observed about the human condition and something we believers especially need to be on guard against:

We are frogs who have a tendency to dress ourselves up in tuxedos.  And when we slip on the tuxedo, we look ridiculous.

Jesus used a harsher, but similar, simile in Matthew 23:

 27“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. "

I know I've been guilty of such.  Why can't we just admit to being frogs?  Isn't our need for a Savior at the very heart of our faith?