Acceptable deceptions

There have been some recent current events that blur the lines we have grown accustomed to observing.  I remember cheering beside my Dad when Bruce Jenner won his gold medals.   His recent revelations don’t cause me to celebrate.  They are shocking to me.   I’ll leave it there.  My prayers are with him.  I see loneliness and hopelessness. 

This past week in our region of the country it was revealed that a leader in the NAACP is a lady who has led those around her to believe that she is a person of color.   However, her high school picture shows a green eyed freckle faced girl with long straight blonde hair.   She says it’s complicated. Must be.  I’m doing my best to withhold the judgemental attitude and instead simply agree that I don’t understand.  I find it shocking.  

The lines are all moving and some of us are reacting strongly to the confusion this creates.   I hope to keep my reactions private, and let my responses be as Godly as He enables me.  I would like to refrain from publicly discussing people I have not met based on sound bites from the media. So I will stop by repeating that these two public developments shock my sensibilities. 

But it begs the question: If I am not happy where I am, what is to stop me from simply claiming to be someone or something else.   

But isn’t that what we all do?  We all wear masks.  We all put out fronts to hide who we really are.  I think the first time was here:

Genesis 3:7 – 10 (ESV) 

7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

 8 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
 9 But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”

10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

We have become accustomed to hiding ourselves in certain ways.  The tough guy, the clown, the workaholic, the preacher, . . . 

What is your preferred cover?   Many of us camouflage ourselves by looking like our neighbors.  Others put out an obviously shocking front that keeps everyone around us off balance.  But the effect is the same.  No one sees the real me. 

But God comes to us and asks “where are you?”   Not because He doesn’t know, but we must come clean from our own self made deception in order to be clean.  

The Truth sets us free.  

1 John 1:5-10 (ESV)

5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

He has promised that if we walk into the light and agree with Him (confess) about our sin, He is both reliable and right to forgive us and to remove the sin.  But if we stubbornly cling to our self-deception, there is no freedom.  

This is the most sobering thought I have come to realize in this regard. Before God, my mask is as obsurd and shocking as the ones in the news.  If I cling to it, it is also as hopeless.  
Your thoughts?