image from Etsy
For over a year now, we’ve battled COVID, with a variety of strategies. One of the more controversial one deals with wearing masks, should we or shouldn’t we? If we’ve been fully vaccinated or not? Yeah, it’s partisan and often judgmental. But perhaps we can use COVID masking, which many of us disagree on, as a metaphor for a deeper spiritual truth. One I suspect we may also disagree on. However, this one clearly qualifies as biblical.
For years, my life theme came from the old Simon and Garfunkel song “I Am a Rock,” and the line “and a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries.” Ironically, a lot of my college and high school students also loved that song—or they heard their parents playing it regularly.
The safety of being a rock came from my fear of being known, of being rejected or judged, of being hurt or disappointed. So, I played it safe and let few inside. Not much joy, but a lot of safety. Honestly though, that process verges on hypocrisy—knowingly and intentionally portraying a person I knew I wasn’t. By the way, that’s why many reject following Jesus. Not that we aren’t perfect, but we pretend to be, and many see through our disguise and recoil from a faith that mostly just pretends.
Problems from that abound, partly we never know our real identity, or what false persona we portrayed to each person we encounter. We get lost in our make believe world. We also short circuit any meaningful relationships. I did these a lot.
But a totally unexpected consequence accompanied returning to Christ at 23. For the first time, I saw myself as a person of worth, apart from my performance. If God saw me like that, and if he knows more than I do, then maybe he knew something I couldn’t conceive of. That began a slow process (OK, like a glacier melting in the midst of an Ice Age) of moving into transparency. Suzanne Deschidn, a volunteer editor for my book Not a Safe God, kept pushing me to open up more. And more. And more. That was tough.
And scripture supports that. Look at all the holy men and women of God, with their biggest sins laid out in the best-selling book of all time. Just after Paul encouraged us to mature and reach the whole fulness of God, he gave one of the steps, “speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ” (Ephesians 4:15). And the brother of Jesus took it even further, in the JB Phillips translation, “get in the habit of admitting your sins to each other and praying for each other.”
Transparency still scares me. It violates my self-protective nature. Others still sometimes wound me when I am. Still, I’m committed to that process as an issue of faith. I can’t be the follower of Jesus I want to be and hold up a mask. Frankly, transparency come with a lot of freedom—if we acknowledge our mistakes, no one can blackmail us with them!
The original word for hypocrite came from Greek actors in large theaters who held a mask of comedy or tragedy in front of their face. It’s time to drop them.
Kick Starting the Discussion
Where are you on the continuum of transparency and being a rock? Why? Are you content with that? What keeps you from opening up more? If you follow Jesus, how does your faith guide your transparency? What most intrigues you about becoming more transparent?
Folks, this is an example, not the topic of the post. So please, no comments on COVID masking, pro or con, OK? Thanks so much!