It’s always funny to me when someone zips by at 80 plus and then, seeing the cop in the median nearly put their right foot in their hip pocket and soon are driving 58. I keep the cruise set and go right by them again.

In the church there is unfortunately far too much pressure to look right and be right. We know what we ought to be, but we can’t live up to it (or don’t want to). We accept our own weaknesses and zip along life at 80, hitting the brakes on Sunday morning to make sure that we don’t catch the eye of the law. As a result, we look just like everyone else 6 1/2 days a week. Ironically, the rest of the world are the ones who see right through this, it’s only those in the church who are fooled.

Casting Crowns (you really ought to give them a listen) have a song called Stained Glass Masquerade. The chorus is:

Are we happy plastic people
Under shiny plastic steeples
With walls around our weakness
And smiles to hide our pain
But if the invitation’s open
To every heart that has been broken
Maybe then we close the curtain
On our stained glass masquerade

Perhaps the question is two fold:

Are we willing to be real and let ourselves be known?

and

Are we willing to let others reveal themselves to us without discarding or judging them them?

If we can’t answer yes to both questions, there’s little chance we’ll have much impact on anyone.

Thanks.

People are driving like frauds in part because there are so many laws and so much spotty (or dirty) enforcement that it is simply better to tail a police cruiser than drive past it, even if you are a law-abiding citizen. This can apply to churches as well. I visited an independent fundamental Baptist church for a long time. One attendee sported a bumper sticker on her car from a popular rock ‘n’ roll church from the other side of town. (The rock ‘n’ roll church has ministries galore, uses the King James Bible, does door-to-door evangelism like this other church. But it plays rock music and has an in-house tattoo parlor, among other sins.) I enjoyed attending the church for a time precisely because I was a fraud among them, at least in their eyes. I could tell, too, much of the time, what they thought of me. No suit. No tie. Always sidling up to my lady friend. Grinning like the Cheshire cat during the hymns. (I loved the hymns most!) Plus I speak in tongues! And I like heavy metal!

I have learned, having attended so many different denominations over the years, that it does not take much to fit into a church — and even become a shining beacon of piety. Catholic, Baptist, Reformed, indie fundie, charismatic — it hardly matters. Each church’s pastorate and devout bandy about their own sets of rules and laws, sometimes so complex that it is, truly, like I have to tail a police cruiser because if I drive a little too enthusiastically for Jesus, I am going to get pulled over, interrogated, warned, arrested, or worse in church.

When I try, deliberately try, I never can keep up the fraud. I am too lazy, unmotivated, and disgusted by dishonesty to do that. But I do go about in fear sometimes, not only because someone might find out that I may do thus-and-so, but because the Holy Spirit can reveal to any believer any of my faults and sins.