Rejecting the Mask

I thought my last post might need some clarification. Or perhaps could use some elaboration. I wanted to be careful to not offend anyone (by offend, I don't mean offend in the usual sense) by telling them what they could figure out. That is a no-no of writing-you don't want to talk down to your readers. You want to give them enough information to draw the conclusions you intend for them to draw (this is something I need to work on...), and yet not explain to them what is quite clear as if they are stupid ignoramuses.

I have discovered I enjoy allegorical writing. I think the meaning of my last one is discernable, but I wanted to say some things that did not fit into the story. And I also didn't want anyone to think I am crazy, depressed, never really happy, or anything like that. It is an allegory.

Yet, in accordance with the warning of this particular allegory, I did not want to share it, because it is true, nevertheless.

Recently I attended a Cru meeting where the speaker, a counselor, discussed this. He started by reading Genesis, where it says, "the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed."

Can you imagine having nothing to hide? Not being ashamed of anything? No secrets. No ugly parts. No thoughts you won't share.

You can't imagine it. It's like heaven.

If you're married, you might have some idea of what it's like. But even then, you still have fear, shame, things you wish you could hide. Last Sunday, the Sunday school teacher said when he was little, he asked his mom if she wished that they could read each others' minds. When she said no, he thought, "My mom has no imagination!" When he became a teenager, he realized his mom was wise.

What happened as soon as Adam and Eve sinned?

They didn't point fingers. They didn't hide from God. They didn't become angry.

The first thing they did was cover up. The first thing they felt was shame.

Shame, the counselor said, leads to fear. And fear leads to control. When we are ashamed of who we are, we fear someone finding out or rejecting us, and when we fear, that fear controls us.

The teacher turned next to 1 John. I love 1 John. I have read it dozens and dozens of times. Perhaps I will write about my discovery about the verse "He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins" some time. He read chapter 1:5-7.

This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.  If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.  But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.

Normally this is interpreted, as I have done, as darkness/light standing for sin. But that means it says, "If we do not sin as He does not sin...Jesus cleanses us from all sin," which seems odd. He maintained that light stood for truth: "If we walk in the truth as He is in the truth, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin."

When we hide the truth from each other, we are kept from fellowship.

He talked about how we all have these masks that we wear. How we put them on, afraid of someone seeing the real us and rejecting it. With these masks on, they can't reject us.

On the other hand, they can't love us either.

At the end of the day, you take off that mask, that mask that others have loved or perhaps rejected, and there you are in your original state. Unrejected. And unloved.

The truth shall set you free.

When something is brought out into the light, its true characteristics are revealed. That's why being open is so hard and frightening and necessary. The first step to correcting a problem is acknowledging that you have it. And sin's foolishness has a way of becoming very clear when you tell-or even consider telling-it in detail to a friend.

Fight the control that fear has over you by choosing not to be ashamed. That is, by walking in the truth, in fellowship.

And the joy of this all?

You have searched me and known me. God knows all. There is nothing about us--no fear, no sin, no sorrow--that He does not know. Though I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. We have no mask before Him.

And He loves us still, and utterly.