In recent years, the entire world was forced to wear masks.
Limited in our ability to share life together, we lost our experience of community. Our masks were a physical barrier which screamed, “Stay away from me because I am going to stay away from you”.
They did not allow us to express kindness and joy with our smiles. We experienced a sense of isolation and separation from those we loved. Many of us were plunged into depression and anxiety; a pandemic of loneliness set in.
WEARING MASKS, HOWEVER, IS NOTHING NEW.
People have been wearing masks ever since the Garden of Eden. The very first couple, Adam and Eve, enjoyed a wonderful relationship with each other. They lived in and from the presence of God in total harmony and peace. They were naked and not ashamed, honest and vulnerable. They related to each other, and to God, in perfect innocence…
All that changed when they disobeyed God, and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Their peace and harmony instantly evaporated and a darkness settled over them—no longer perfect and good, but aware of being shameful and defective. They experienced a powerful, new feeling of vulnerability. The fear that others might find out how wrong and defective they were.
Being naked and exposed was not an option for them, so they put on fig leaves, the “masks” which would allow them to hide from each other.
Their new found inadequacy must not be discovered, or they might be rejected.
And so it's been for humanity ever since that fateful day.
We all grow up on this planet with the fear of being rejected because of our imperfections. We wear masks to hide our weaknesses and present only our strengths.
OUR MASKS WORK WELL TO HIDE FROM ONE ANOTHER, BUT THEY ALSO KEEP US FROM COMING TO TRULY KNOW EACH OTHER.
We long to be loved, and to give our love to others, but our masks stay on because they keep us feeling safe and secure.
Masks are the great enemy of relationship, and when we choose to keep them on, we live in isolation and loneliness.
Consider the following progression:
…where there is no honesty, there can be no intimacy.
How can there be intimacy when we don't fully know each other?
Though we live together, we do so as strangers, rather than as true friends. Where there is no intimacy, there will be no power, because we will function as isolated individuals.
We’ll never experience Ecclesiastes 4:9-11, the promise that two are better than one. That when we fall, or when we’re cold and weak, we have another who can…
- pick us up,
- keep us warm, and
- provide us with strength.
…And where there is no power, there will be no victory.
When we live in isolation, without the aid of another, we can find ourselves not up to the demands of our fallen world when adversity comes knocking on our door.
As Ecclesiastes 4:9 warns, “Woe to the one who falls, when there is no one to pick them up”.
WHERE THERE IS NO HONESTY,
THERE WILL BE NO INTIMACY.
And where there is no intimacy, there will be no power. Where there is no power, there will be no victory. All of us have seen this equation played out, not only in the lives of those around us, but in our own lives as well.
This horrible progression is built on a dreadful foundation:
the power of rejection.
If we are afraid of being rejected, we’ll never take off our masks. We’ll continue to hide from each other, maybe for a lifetime.
We’ll tragically settle for superficial relationships, never experiencing the wonder of loving, and being loved, in dynamic, intimate relationship.
We’ll never know the blessings of sharing each other’s strengths and will likely trudge through life empty and defeated, instead of soaring in victory.
BUT ALL THIS CAN CHANGE WHEN WE REPLACE REJECTION WITH ACCEPTANCE.
When we accept each other, unconditionally and irrevocably, then we can be honest with each other and take off our masks—because we will be safe for each other. When we are honest with each other, we will cultivate intimacy between us.
We will let others know us for who we really are, with all our imperfections and weaknesses exposed, because we know we will be loved in spite of them.
And when we experience intimate relationship with each other, we will experience, firsthand, the power of community.
Instead of fighting for our own survival, we will fight for each other when the struggles and pains of life come our way.
Sharing in this powerful bond of acceptance, our relationships will not only survive, but thrive, as we journey through this fallen world together, instead of having to journey alone.
ACCEPTANCE MIGHT BE THE GREATEST GIFT ANYONE CAN EVER GIVE OR RECEIVE.
It offers a safe harbor of love, mercy and grace that empowers us to stop pretending we’re something we’re not, and discover who we really are. We all desperately need this gift of acceptance because we all struggle with the same sense of inadequacy, the same fear of rejection.
But where can we find such acceptance?
No one can give it to us because of one simple reason:
They don’t have it themselves.
And you can’t give something you don’t own!
If we are going to find acceptance, we are going to have to find it in God, who offers us acceptance in His son, the Lord Jesus Christ. In His work on the cross, Jesus took everything about us that was defective and inadequate and replaced it with His own gift of righteousness.
HAVING BEEN MADE RIGHT THROUGH OUR FAITH IN HIM, WE NOW HAVE THE ACCEPTANCE WE’VE LONGED FOR ALL OUR LIVES.
Accepted in Him, we can now give the acceptance that others so desperately crave. God can work through us, the accepted ones, to stop this foolish charade humanity has been living in ever since the Garden of Eden.
If we, the church, commit to accept each other relationally, the way God accepts us individually, we can build a safe community where the masks can finally come off without the fear of rejection.
Instead of hiding our frailty and our failures, we will be able to share them with each other in the confidence that we will not be rejected because of them, but loved through them, as we all seek to mature into the likeness of Christ.
People around us are crippled by the fear of rejection and the loneliness that fear produces.
They desperately need to see us without our masks, living in a dynamic community of acceptance and love. Only then will they dare to overcome their fear of rejection, take off their masks, and join us in this powerful and intimate relationship we share, in and from our Lord Jesus Christ, as His beloved church.
Romans 15:7 encourages us to accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us, for the glory of God.
When we do so, the lost world will finally see Jesus Christ as He really is:
A SAFE HARBOR OF LOVE,
MERCY, AND GRACE.
Living in the sphere of His love, we will find a place where all of us can finally be the people He created us to be.
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