Last week my ninety-one-year-old mom took a fall landing face-first on her driveway. Thankfully, no bones were broken. However, she ended up with four stitches in her forehead, along with significant bruising around her nose and eyes. Afterwards she joked that she was simply creating herself a scary mask in preparation for Halloween.
It isn’t unusual for people to create masks to hide behind. I am not referring to the kind some people wear for one night as they go trick-or-treating or attend a costume party. I am talking about those fronts we tend to put on in order to hide our real selves. Usually those masks are the opposite variety from what we wear at Halloween. Instead of a mask trying to make ourselves look strange, ugly, or frightening, we attempt to hide our flaws and make ourselves look better than we really are. Maybe it isn’t as obvious as the lady on the exaggerated TV commercial who walks around holding a sign with a smiley face in front of her as she goes through her day in order to hide her depression. But we might also hide our true feelings or our genuine condition behind masks of fake smiles, forced efforts, and comments of “I’m fine.”
Genuineness is an important quality for us to seek to possess. It is helpful for us to be genuine with other people in order to build strong, trustworthy relationships. It is important that we be honest with ourselves about our true condition. Too many people are accepting their deceptive facades about themselves as being reality rather than looking behind the mask. And it is essential that we be genuine when it comes to God. Our masks aren’t fooling Him anyway. He sees behind all the pretense. He knows our hearts and our thoughts. He can see the pain and scars that we try to hide from others. He knows our weaknesses and faults. And, yes, He can see those sins that we try to deny exist or that we make excuses for or that we cover up with make-up so as to make them not appear so ugly.
Hypocrisy is one of the traits Jesus often condemned in the religious leaders of His day. They were pretenders. They weren’t living in reality. They put on the costume of being holy people or of being those who had a special connection to God, but in truth they were more out of touch with God than many of the “sinners” they looked down on and despised. Let’s be sure that we aren’t guilty of being in a similar condition. We can put on a religious face and attend church meetings yet still be far from the kingdom of God. We can be involved in religious activities but our hearts not be right with the Lord. We can wear a mask of light and love while darkness and selfishness rules in our souls.
Let’s take off our masks and be real with ourselves, with other people, and with God. It might be hard. It can be painful to come to terms with our weak and flawed selves. We might lose a few acquaintances who are more comfortable with our pretend selves rather than the real ones. However, our genuineness will strengthen our ties with true friends. And we must be genuine if we want to cultivate a close relationship with the Lord. Salvation and spiritual healing come through humbling ourselves and confessing our sins, not by denying our wrongdoing.
Maybe our real selves are bruised and broken. That is okay. God knows. And He is ready to receive us and to help us if we will come to Him just as we are.
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