2022 has already become a year when one defining quality is so clearly required above all others, especially if you are someone in a role of responsible leadership. It's what marked those old stories as being those who rightly stood as representatives of the most high, because even when they failed - which several of them did on various occasions - they were not afraid to openly show and repent of their errors.
Pretence is burned up by the refining presence of authenticity - a dispensing of any and all attempts to 'act' as something we're not - to put away any sham and face God and each other with 'unveiled face' so we know what we are.
Our disguises don't just hide our sinful nature, they often also project a 'virtue' that we polish so others will buy the act as the real us. This often develops to the heights of religious professionalism, where we juggle to keep all our various pretences in play on multiple fronts, thinking that we can maintain our performance all the time, hiding what is actually going on behind the curtains.
The first person we must properly 'see' and soberly evaluate is ourselves. That manner of honesty usually eludes us, and we buy into an 'expression' we think is healthy and certainly with a propensity to be liked.
The first person we beguile, in other worlds, is ourselves. We project what we're about in a popular fashion, but like Dorian Grey, make sure people are oblivious to the darker, more objectionable side of our natures.
The skills employed here by the 'old' self within are the ones we have cultivated since the early days; when we learned how to gain certain things in a manner that was good for the ego.
Christ examines our natures in a fashion that is far beyond skin deep, calling us to something far more genuine than our projections and manipulations.
Truth is about an actual escape - a genuine liberation - from seeing what we are as 'accomplished' when we commence with our hidden poverty.
'Church' which wants us to nurture a 'positive' self image, perhaps in respect to our giving (and thereby, receiving), or our individual prosperity has zero to say when we look at the lessons God wants to teach us through a wise man like Job, or through Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes. God isn't going to seek to make us 'feel good' about what needs to be purified. He will pursue a course that cuts through our lies.
The mistakes so often perpetrated in relation to self definition are either that we view ourselves as too polished or too demeaned to either need or be significant enough to warrant genuine aid. When pride takes centre stage we place ourselves in such a fashion that we cannot see the magnitude of actual virtue above and beyond us. When it's loathing that reigns, we recoil from the abundance of God's unmerited purchase of us from poverty. The devastating error in both cases is an entirely miss-placed confidence in our ability to trust our own evaluation as exact and therefore beyond question. The consequences are dire.
When we think we know better than the most high regarding ourselves, we are swallowed in a morass of miss-applied piety that takes us beyond the scope of redemption unless we have our eyes opened to the folly that we are like Saul on the road of intent to prove ourselves in holy service, when in truth we are resisting exactly what God is seeking to tell us.
Pretence readily breeds an inner proclivity to an attitude whereby we view ourselves in regards to virtue as superior to others. This manner of living must be shattered if we are going to be any real use to anyone - especially ourselves!
God will often mercifully bring about situations and circumstances whereby such a process - painful as it may be - can occur.
So, are we seeing life in the manner which allows genuine stepping-out beyond our pre-conceptions, especially in respect to each other?
So many times in the Gospels, the most intimate and telling moments occur around a meal, where people are feeling more at home and relaxed. It is in these calmer moments that Jesus often chooses to ask the telling questions or raise the more disquieting issues, and I suspect this is deliberate, because He is seeking to say something to us regarding how God works - inside an environment of genuine warmth and concern. Here we see just how wide of the mark we are, but that aid and understanding are much closer than we often recognise. Beyond the roles we so often play, God is surely waiting to come and dine with us.
Fear often keeps as petrified from such palpable intimacy. In such cases, we have to get behind the narrative and ascertain who is so imprisoning us and why, so we can expose the lie of such a narrative.
The Apostle John tells us that our faith is all about us "walking in the light" in a manner that reflects the light evidenced in Jesus Christ - that's the basis of all true fellowship. Paul speaks of how that manner of transforming transparency illumines and adorns our lives as God's children. These things can only become manifest as and when we leave behind these conventions which impede us from living in the Spirit, knowing that 'oil and wine' which genuinely gladdens the heart and removes the burrs that so readily tarnish us.
Honesty and control are never compatible - honesty costs, often deeply, but it is far better than an alternative, which merely leaves us abused. Bad church, as one person scarred by this said to me recently, is like a machine continually tearing and shredding people's souls behind a mask of smiles and mock sincerity.
Freedom in this respect is when we chose the 'dangerous ground' of seeking real intimacy - openness and vulnerability - with God and others who are prepared to do so. It's a sharing of some of each others burdens so we can all carry our own burdens in life a little more lightly. It is learning how to show such truth to brothers and sisters so we become encouraged enough to show similar genuine-ness to those outside of the faith.
Sometimes, we think it is wrong to express what is really unfolding with us - that this will be viewed as thwarting an interest in truth, but so often it is as people related to each other in such troubles that the good news has the deepest impact.
When we accept the lie that it's wrong to be honest about ourselves, we quickly drop through the trap-door of pretence, and once that is established as our 'de-fault' position, we place ourselves out of range of genuine repentance and vital change. Think of the manner in which the elder son in the prodigal parable views his relationship to his own father - he believes he has been overlooked in spite of all of his virtue and obedience, but the reality is that he is the one with the issue - he has neglected to be more than a subservient in a relationship that was meant to be so much more, and his wayward returning brother understands this more than he ever will.
Seek to promote yourself to someone in respect to how virtuous you are, and they will almost certainly view you as someone who needs to be kept at arms length. Show yourself as a person dealing with real life, and being genuine about it, and they'll be interested in what you are about.
Life hurts.
Life will often leave us in pieces.
Life will prove that we are creatures with feet of clay - it's then that people are looking for some glint of uncharacteristic wisdom in how we follow through in such troubles.
We shock the world when, in the midst of very real trials, we show real distress but also confidence in a strength from beyond ourselves.
The world lies continually. Christ calls us to living beyond such pretence.
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