Perspective: Being Real

I share these thoughts, hoping they are of help to someone else.

Being Real

Scripture:

LORD, You have examined me.
You know me.
You know when I sit down
and when I stand up.
Even from far away,
You comprehend my plans.
You study my traveling and resting.
You are thoroughly familiar
with all my ways.
There isn’t a word on my tongue, LORD,
that You don’t
already know completely.

Psalm 139:1-4 (CEB)

Life can hold you down
When you're not looking up
Can't you hear the sounds?
Hearts beating out loud

Although the names change
Inside we're all the same
Why can't we tear down the walls
And show the scars we're covering?

From "Inside Us All" by Creed

I have a love-hate relationship with church signs. Sometimes I come across a sign that actually makes a profound statement or one that offers passersby a message of hope. These signs, I like. So often, though, I find myself wincing at a lame pun or cringing at a condemning message. In these cases, I cannot help but feel that these signs are not helping to lead people to God and to the Church but are instead keeping people away. These signs, I do not like.

Recently I saw a church sign that gave me mixed feelings. It said something to the extent of the following: "You can hide your sins from others, but you can't hide them from God." Depending on a person's perspective, this sign offers either a threat or a comforting message.

A person could view the message on this sign as a warning or as a threat. One could easily interpret the message as, "You had better be careful, because God is watching you!" One could even read it, "God is going to get you if He catches you sinning!" In this light, it is not too dissimilar to the subtly threatening and downright creepy Christmas song "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."

He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake¹

While I do believe that God sees everything we do and that sin has serious consequences, I hate to see people using condemning or threatening messages as a means of winning people to Christ - or rather, frightening people to Christ. Though the message on this sign might seem threatening on the surface, if we dig a little deeper, we can find a comforting message on this sign.

When you were a child, did you ever do something wrong and then try to keep it a secret from your parents? Do you remember the guilt and alienation you felt? Do you remember wanting to confess to your parents but fearing what they might do to you or how they might feel about you if you did confess? It was a horrible feeling, wasn't it?

The message on the church sign is correct that we cannot hide our sins from God. God is omniscient, seeing and knowing everything. The Psalmist reminds us at the beginning of Psalm 139 that God knows everything about us: everything we do, everywhere we go, the inner workings of our hearts and minds, everything we say, and everything we think. It is utterly pointless to try to hide anything from God or to try to pretend that we are someone we're not before God. God knows everything about us - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Throughout the Gospel we learn of God's amazing love for us. The immortal words of John 3:16, "For God so loved the world," remind us that God loves each and every one of us. The "Parable of the Prodigal Son" teaches us that God loves us in spite of the bad things we have done.² The "Parable of the Lost Sheep" teaches us that God does not forget about any of us and goes out of His way to bring us home when we go astray.³ The Cross shows us the great lengths to which God will go because He loves us so much.⁴

God's love for us is what makes the message on the sign comforting. We cannot hide our sins from God, but we do not have to hide our sins from God. We don't have to worry about how God would feel about us if He found out some bad thing we have done, because He already knows everything we have ever done. God knows everything about each of us, including our sins, our character flaws, and our shortcomings, and He loves us anyway. We can be completely honest with God. We can be ourselves before God.

God wants us to be ourselves. The brutal honesty of the Psalms remind us that we can come to God with anything we are thinking, feeling, or going through.⁵ Throughout the Bible, we are encouraged to confess our wrongdoings to God and to others.⁶ When we tell God something about ourselves, we are not revealing anything He does not already know about us. Being honest with God means first being honest with ourselves. Confessing our sins to God is tough because it forces us to take ownership of what we have done and to admit to ourselves that we did something wrong. Honesty with ourselves is a vital part of changing our ways and of coming to terms with the difficult things in our lives.

We are free to be ourselves with God, but are we free to be ourselves with other people? Unfortunately, we live in a very demanding and judgmental society, and we are all too aware of this. People are a lot less understanding, forgiving, and patient with each other than God is with us. We easily find ourselves guarded, afraid to show our true selves to others. We try to present ourselves as something we're not in the hopes of meeting the high expectations of the world around us.

Recently, I went to a grocery store and noticed some veggie burgers in the organic foods case. A lot of people don't like veggie burgers because they don't taste like real meat. Personally, I have enjoyed veggie burgers in the past, but I have to agree with the critics that they don't actually taste like real hamburgers.

People can be a lot like veggie burgers. First, a veggie burger is prepared with the intentions of giving it the appearance, texture, and taste of ground beef - something it is not. In the same way, we often try to pass ourselves off as someone we are not, hoping to be more acceptable to others. Sometimes we manage to fool people, but sometimes people see right through us. Second, many people have tried veggie burgers and found themselves disappointed that they don't actually taste like real meat. Similarly, when we get to know other people and realize that they don't meet our hopes and expectations, we become disappointed.

The key to enjoying a veggie burger is to accept it for what it is: not meat, but a vegetable product made to look and taste somewhat like meat. You have to put your expectations aside. Don't expect it to taste like actual beef; just enjoy it for what it is. Similarly, I think the key to truly loving other people is to accept them for who they are. To love others, we need to accept the things we like about them along with the things we don't like about them - the good, the bad, and the ugly. Put your expectations aside, and look past the facades people try to present.

We are called to be honest with ourselves, with God, and with others, but we live in a world that makes it extremely difficult to truly be ourselves. Our society can be critical, judgmental, and condemning, and Christian circles can be the worst of all. Christ teaches us, "Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged."⁷ He goes on to teach us not to try to remove a splinter from another person's eye until we get the log out of our own.⁸ Sadly it is the people who should be the most familiar with Christ's teachings about judging who are notorious for being judgmental. We Christians know that we are not without sin, but that does not stop us from throwing stones anyway.

So often we end up guarding ourselves, hiding the things we think are unacceptable in order to protect ourselves from the judgments of others. When we try to hide the things we consider to be bad about ourselves, we may end up depriving people of the things that are good about us. We may very well uproot the wheat along with the weeds.

The world needs to change. We must work to create a world where people can be open and honest about themselves. We should not be judgmental, but instead we should have empathy. We should not be demanding of others, but instead we should be understanding. We need to be patient, compassionate, and kind, fully mindful of the grace that God has shown us. We need to love and accept people for who they are. Remember that we are commanded to love our neighbors as we love ourselves,⁹ and remember that, deep down, we all want to be loved and accepted.


Notes:
1 - From "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" by John Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie
2 - Luke 15:11-32
3 - Matthew 18:12-14 and Luke 15:3-7
4 - Romans 5:8
5 - Consider the frustration expressed in Psalm 73, the anger expressed in Psalm 10, the hatred expressed toward the end of Psalm 139, the thoughts of cruelty expressed at the end of Psalm 137, and the despair expressed at the beginning of Psalm 22.
6 - James 5:16 and 1 John 1:9
7 - Matthew 7:1 (CEB)
8 - Matthew 7:3-5 (CEB referenced)
9 - Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31, Luke 10:27


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