StriperAddict
Senior Member
Relational navigation by mask is this world’s required skill for acceptance. Putting on a proper look owns us, and we let it. Of course, acceptance often means a terrible cover-up (particularly for the sons and daughters of God) and painful frustration because we’re not actually ourselves. If we’re always inventing a just-right look, then the exercise demands energy to create, robbing us of the grace, glory and rest of being who and how we are. Living by faith that we are Jesus’ new creation is stolen from us. Relational navigation by mask is one of the biggest causes of failure in people today. That it is practiced and even encouraged amongst the church of God is surely one of Satan’s greatest achievements.
But there are many of us wearied of it all. So in sometimes private “ceremonies” of bitter anger and disappointment, and in sometimes public “ceremonies” of obvious failure, we come out of hiding to authenticity, no matter the result, no matter the cost.
When the “ceremony” is met with applause by others walking in freedom, genuine fellowship is the result and the glory of the church is radiant. The powerful temptation and terrible grip of the mask of pretense is broken for the first and most important time. After that, the community of the free prefer each other in truth, and that faith-filled preference means rich and godly grace for all. Until then, grace is perverted into something earned or doled out in measured affirmation—and no one is truly transformed because no one is true.
In the community of the free, we are God’s workmanship, and that becomes most evident and most joyful when we lower the mask and drop the tools of pretense. And we are discovered, even to ourselves, to be quite stunning after all.
There is increasing evidence that more and more of us are on the way of freedom.
2 Corinthians 5:16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
But there are many of us wearied of it all. So in sometimes private “ceremonies” of bitter anger and disappointment, and in sometimes public “ceremonies” of obvious failure, we come out of hiding to authenticity, no matter the result, no matter the cost.
When the “ceremony” is met with applause by others walking in freedom, genuine fellowship is the result and the glory of the church is radiant. The powerful temptation and terrible grip of the mask of pretense is broken for the first and most important time. After that, the community of the free prefer each other in truth, and that faith-filled preference means rich and godly grace for all. Until then, grace is perverted into something earned or doled out in measured affirmation—and no one is truly transformed because no one is true.
In the community of the free, we are God’s workmanship, and that becomes most evident and most joyful when we lower the mask and drop the tools of pretense. And we are discovered, even to ourselves, to be quite stunning after all.
There is increasing evidence that more and more of us are on the way of freedom.
2 Corinthians 5:16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
