“Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” — Matthew 6:1
Who are we really? As we search to uncover who we really are, we often start with the identity we give ourselves.
This first identity is who we pretend to be – the persona we project that we hope everyone else will buy. The image we try to portray to others usually reflects how we see ourselves and/or how we want others to see us. It controls many of our choices, from the clothes we wear to the car we drive to our hobbies, the courtesies we show, and so on.
For example, we create an appearance for ourselves – choosing or avoiding certain types of clothing, shoes, hats, makeup, jewelry, piercings, tattoos, hairstyles and so on. Why? Because these things create an illusion about who we want others to believe that we are. This is why there are books on the subject of dressing for success.
This identity is enormously important. Without it, there would be no civilization in a fallen world. We may feel like punching someone in the nose, but that would be inconsistent with the identity we project, so our courtesies tell us to walk away. We may feel like looking for romance from someone outside our marriage partner, but our sense of "character" tells us no.
Unfortunately, most of Christianity as it is practiced is contained within this identity. In church, we carefully hide our deeper identities from each other and from ourselves. Instead of "coming clean" with each other, we expend an enormous amount of energy rearranging our image by working on various Christian behavior modification programs. As a result, Christianity is viewed as one more self help program, and a restrictive one at that.
The good news is this: God’s grace goes far deeper than behavior modification. God’s grace creates an entirely new identity for us. But, that identity does us little practical good until we come face to face with our ugliest identity, the one the fallen world gives to us.
Be encouraged!
Dwight
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