Girl, Wash Your Face
Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies about Who You Are So You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be
By: Rachel Hollis
Just read “You Who?” by Rachel Jankovic instead. Please. I don’t even care if you read the rest of this review.
I do have a few positive things to say about “Girl, Wash Your Face,” and those are listed at the end. I first wanted to explain my poor view of this book. If Hollis wasn’t a Christian, this book would make perfect sense and I wouldn’t really have any basis of judgment on the content (or lack of content). However, she does claim Christ and attempts to reference God and the Bible a few times in her book, thus I feel compelled to point out how she missed a GIGANTIC opportunity to share the gospel, and frankly ends up doing the opposite.
I didn’t even get past the intro before she says things like: You have control of your own life. You choose your own happiness. Your life is a creation of your own making. In fact, her entire book is filled with these statements. You are your own hero. Your dreams are essential to who you are and don’t let anyone stop you from achieving all the success and wealth you want. You just have to try hard enough, believe enough, and never accept ‘no’ as an answer and you will have everything you want. Because you DESERVE it.
These sentiments, however, are not found in Scripture. The Bible teaches the OPPOSITE. Jesus is our hero. We are his workmanship, not of our own making. God is in control. We are to die to ourselves. We are not worthy. God directs our steps. Our identity is not in our achievements. Self-sufficiency is in direct opposition to God-dependency.
I like what Hannah Anderson said in her book Humble Roots: “Pride tells us that all we have to do is organize well enough, plan effectively enough, and work hard enough and we can achieve our dreams. Humility teaches us that it was never up to us in the first place.”
Hollis says, “I believe the Lord gave me this platform to be a good shepherd to this diverse and beautiful flock.” And she is correct to say that she has a huge and diverse platform to encourage people in TRUTH. But instead of following the example of the Good Shepherd, Himself, she teaches people, not to follow Christ and die to self, but to do everything you can to promote yourself, give credit to yourself, and love yourself above all else. To encourage people to live for themselves and to live as if their best life is here on earth. But that’s a LIE. Our best life is not here. It’s in eternity with our Creator. To settle for the success and wealth of this earth, to encourage people to strive after our worldly passions instead of Christ and Him crucified, well I venture to say, whether she has the most righteous intentions or not, she’s sneaking like a wolf instead of guiding like a shepherd.
Luke 9:23 “’Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.’”
Romans 6:6 “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.”
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 “You are not your own. You were bought with a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies.”
Ephesians 2 “we all once lived in passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us…made us alive…by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing…not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
Matthew 6:33 "But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you."
As I mentioned before, to someone who doesn’t believe in God, her book would make perfect sense- the most important thing you could do would be to take control of your life and make something for yourself. But as Christians we have a hope for something more. We have freedom and power in Christ and are not bound by our sinful desires and the meager offerings of a broken world. Jesus died so we could die. He rose so we could live. And live for Him. And Hollis clearly did not find that worth sharing.
I also felt discouraged by this: she writes, “Just because you believe it doesn’t mean it’s true for everyone. We decide that our religion is right therefore every other religion must be wrong… I don’t know the central tenet of your faith, but the central tenet of mine is ‘Love they neighbor.’” It’s a nice sentiment that is unpopular to disagree with, but it’s not logical and it’s not biblical. God can’t both exist and not exist. Jesus can’t be both ‘the only way’ and ‘one of many ways’ and ‘not the way’ all at the same time. Truth is not relative. She is not wrong to say we are to love our neighbor. But she skips right over the first tenet ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength’. She doesn’t tell us that Jesus claimed to be ‘THE way, THE truth, THE life’ and that no one comes to the Father but through HIM. She doesn’t tell us that the path to life is narrow and few find it. It would seem she thinks it’s noble to allow everyone to do whatever they want because we all have our own ‘truth.’
SO THE POSITIVE: Hollis gets the feelings. Her writing is funny. I can see how she inspires so many people. I resonated a lot with her chapters on motherhood- the mom-guilt, the fears, the panic, the judgment. I also ached with her adoption journey. Though I have not adopted myself, I can relate with the pain of losing a child you thought would be yours. I appreciate her encouragement to pursue a more diverse community, something I know I need to work on. I also think she recognizes a lot of the problems we have with our identity. She rightly targets the tendency we have to compare ourselves, to be lazy, complacent, aimless, to be the victim, and to think we are worthless. I believe she loves Jesus and I believe she thinks she is doing the best she can to help people see their potential. Her intentions to invest in others’ lives is admirable. She just misses the mark when she presents her solutions. She misses the opportunity to truly change their lives everlasting.
Here is a quote from “You Who?” that I think is appropriate to share here: “If we try to write our stories like the world does, composing our little plot points and shaping ourselves into what we think it would be neat to be, but we love Jesus, this is just making him one more interesting plot point about us. We put our bumper sticker that says ‘Jesus-lover’ on our little lifestyle car…But Christ will not be managed or contained like that. If he truly bought you with his blood, he did not do so in order to get a sponsorship position in your life. He’s not here to look good next to your brand. He bought your life, and you are His.”
And that is what is achingly missing in this book. I can’t advocate for someone to read a book that’s missing the point by such a large margin. Hollis writes that she never reads reviews anymore, so she probably won’t read this, but I hope she can recognize her mission for herself is pushing God out of her life. Don’t let this be true of you.
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