Being True

There’s a quote I have seen which sums up my heart in today’s splurge:

Be you, everybody else is taken!

In the last few months, I have realised just how many ways and for how long I have been pulled out of shape. I felt like an outsider as a child and in my desire to belong, I began a pattern of compromise. However, what I did not realise until this year was just how deep that was in me and how it has permeated every single relationship I have. I actually think this is a condition that affects many of us to a greater or lesser extent and one which is rife in the church.

As a child, struggling with school life and feeling excluded, by the time I got to secondary school, I began to join in with activities that I knew were wrong, in order to belong ~ I participated in illegal activities, changed my personality, my accent, my attitudes, my language, and my behaviour, silencing my conscience in the process. 1 Timothy 4:2 talks about

… the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared,

The issue here is one of truth. I was not being true to myself. I was lying, to myself, to those around me; pretending to be something, someone that I wasn’t in order to be accepted. Searing my conscience until that the internal voice that was trying to keep me on track got quieter and quieter. In Ephesians 4:25 in the Message, I was struck by the last sentence, which tells us:

What this adds up to, then, is this: no more lies, no more pretense. Tell your neighbour the truth. In Christ’s body we’re all connected to each other, after all. When you lie to others, you end up lying to yourself.

Going abroad as a teenager in the summer after I finished school, I had so lost sight of who I was that I ended up in serious trouble, involved in an inappropriate relationship which spiralled me into shame and a lifestyle that was very out of control for my college years and beyond. I hardened my heart and refused to listen to my conscience and hurt many people in the process, including my family and friends. The truth was I was hurting inside and as we know:

hurting people hurt people

By the time I met my husband, I was so used to compromising, and I was so ashamed of who I was, I was terrified I would lose the relationship so I compromised from day one. There were things I accepted, submitted to, agreed with, joined in with, that I did not want to, did not agree with, did not like, but never said.

Silence is agreement

Somehow, I expected him to behave differently, to understand me, without me ever explaining and without being real. By the time we did get to “discussing” the issues, we were way past being able to do so in a healthy way. The poor man never really knew the true me, and then to top it all, I became a Christian and started changing more and gaining confidence in being authentic. The relationship sadly never recovered.

In recent months, I have realised that this practice of hiding, masking, pretending, has been pervasive in most of my relationships. The issue of compromising for the sake of relationship has meant I swallow what needed to be said on many an occasion. I would rather say nothing, take the hit as it were, “extending grace” or “walking in love” or whatever euphemism I use to frame what amounts to being too scared to speak in case it impacted the relationship. This has meant that if someone treats me in a way that is hurtful, I “turn the other cheek”. Now that is biblical. It is, it’s true. And sometimes it is the right thing to do. But Paul says in Ephesians 4:14-15

… that we may no longer be children … Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ …

The truth is that immaturity means we stay in this place of being unable to handle the truth, of having to pretend and of having shallow, inauthentic relationships that are based on me and someone else behaving with each other in this kind of dance of pretence that does not make either of us face the areas in our lives that are not Christ-like. Quite honestly, it is not love to never challenge, to never say anything about inappropriate behaviour, to always stay silent. It is not love to pretend.

Fear of losing the relationship is not the only reason for not being authentic. We are socialised in every group we belong to by a complex system of rewards and punishments that conform us to the group’s culture. Whichever culture we belong to, we either conform or we find ourself excluded in subtle ways. We find ourself not being included in conversations, in invitations, in information. In order to be “in” we have to look like everyone else, behave like everyone else, talk like everyone else. If we don’t, we have to be OK with subtle disapproval, snide comments, social pressure. Someone who is different and doesn’t care about what people think, challenges everyone, makes them feel uncomfortable. Think about the groups you belong to, social groups, church, sports groups or whatever ~ they all have a culture, a set of behavioural ‘norms’ that you adopt. Even a language and vocabulary. Either you accept and adapt to them, or you might try to change them to suit you, if you can get others to agree, or you leave. That’s the way it works. But church is supposed to be counter-cultural!

As someone who disciples others, I have been aware of this desire in myself to “make people look more like me” in the sense that I have wanted to encourage them to respond to Jesus in ways that I would, react to situations like I would, develop patterns of behaviour that I have, without checking if that is God’s opinion or mine! I constantly have to ask God to show me what he celebrates about other people, other churches, other cultures so that I learn to appreciate differences.

The times we are living in means we need to develop as the church and grow up. Romans 8 reminds us that creation is groaning as it waits for the revelation of the sons of God. Sons; those who are walking in their sonship, sons of the king, not squabbling children who are offended at every little thing.

We need to grow up and become a mature church and start getting on with the job at hand instead of getting offended with someone who looked at me wrongly in church last week, or who said something that I interpreted as an insult, so I harbour resentment and bitterness, defiling the body of Christ with my issues.

What does this have to do with being true to myself? Well the problem is, if we are not mature enough to have a conversation that allows someone to be real, to have a different opinion from the one sitting next to us, to not like something they like without it being a threat to us and our comfort, we will never reach a place of deep unity. Acts 4:32 tells us that the early church achieved a state of unity that we are still dreaming of:

All the believers were one in heart and mind.

‘One heart and one mind’ implies a level of oneness that is deep, not a superficial, pretence that says one thing and means something else. Not a relationship where we have to hide our true feelings, where we have to behave in ways that hide our true identity. Of all the places where we belong, church should be the one that encourages authenticity; encourages us to be the most true version of ourselves possible; to co-operate with the identity and calling that God wired into us while he was forming us in the womb. We know that there is power in agreement, we are told this in Matthew 18:19.

Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

However, how often are we in verbal agreement externally but our hearts are not in agreement because we have a habit of hiding the truth and pretending with each other. I wonder what impact that is having on our ability to host the presence of God amongst us. How can the presence of God be hosted by us in that place of oneness if there is division in our hearts, dishonesty and deceitfulness with one another?

We must learn to be real and vulnerable with each other. We need to be able to express the issues we are dealing with so that we can support and encourage each other as one body. Not fight each other like some crazy auto-immune disease where the body of Christ turns on itself all the time, but fighting alongside one another, fighting for one another.

Recently, I was reading Proverbs and I was so struck by verse 24, I felt the sense of conviction instantly in relation to this whole area of compromise:

Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you.

I spent some time meditating on the word crooked and how that characterises this issue. We are encouraged to walk on the straight paths of the Lord but we are constantly pulled by our flesh, by the world we live in, by the enemy’s strategies, onto crooked paths. We talk deviously, saying what we know will make our day easier so we tell “white lies” when someone asks our opinion, we stay silent when someone says something negative or demeaning about us or a friend or relative; we join in with gossip to make us feel better; we skirt around the issues we have with each other in ways that are either passive aggressive or by making oblique references to things, hoping the other person will ‘catch’ our meaning instead of asking a direct question or making a direct statement.

Why, oh why, are we not able to be real, to say what we mean, to behave with integrity?

We are scared of the truth. We are scared to express the truth. The reality is if we express our fears, our struggles, our vulnerabilities, we fear rejection; we fear the wrong kind of reaction; exposure and shame; ridicule. We fear we might upset someone, we might make them feel bad. If we express our upset or our issues in a relationship, we are scared that we will upset the other person or cause discomfort.

Usually compromising our identity is a form of self-protection in some form. Telling the truth is a risk. Telling the truth can be uncomfortable. Telling the truth means a degree of vulnerability. Telling the truth opens you up to the potential for disappointment, for rejection, for disapproval.

The truth is it takes effort to work at being real in a relationship. It takes effort to move past the uncomfortable conversations and decide to maintain relationship. It takes effort to apologise for hurting someone. It takes effort to choose to not be offended and to allow someone to say something to us about our behaviour that may feel uncomfortable but ultimately is done from a desire to help us see our blind spots, our weaknesses, and to help us become more who God designed us to be. It takes also a level of trust in the other person that they do indeed have our best interests at heart, that they are speaking in love and not out of some other desire that is destructive.

The truth is that for this to happen, our churches need to feel safer, our relationships need to feel safer. I am trying to learn to have these conversations but it is hard because I have to undo years of saying nothing, and years of saying things in the wrong way.

I think sometimes, we have a wrong perception of Romans 14:19 which says:

So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.

I wonder if we have idolised “keeping the peace” over speaking the truth in love; we have become peace keepers at the expense of truth, rather than peace makers who work through the truth to a place of real peace instead of a false peace that requires compromise, particularly when it is a one-sided compromise, sometimes that the other party may be unaware of. Mutual upbuilding means that both parties are being built up, not one at the expense of the other.

It starts small, like when people say ‘we are going to do “x” do you want to come?’ I am able to say no, if I don’t want to rather than agreeing for the sake of fitting in. Or if someone asks me if I like something, I am able to express an opinion without worrying that I will offend someone, even things like the food they have made me. As I am working at this in my own life, considering places and relationships where I am tempted to compromise my standards, the truth, my values or my opinion in order to stay in relationship or to gain approval or out of fear or some other reason, I have been asking myself these questions:

Where am I not able to say what I think?
Where am I not able to behave in ways that I am comfortable with?
Where do I feel like I have to “watch my step”?
What do I feel I have to change in order to “fit in”?

When I have the answer to these questions, the next logical question is “Why?” so, I ask myself if it is being done in love, in faith, or in order to accommodate, to appease, to be accepted, to belong, to gain approval, out of fear of not being accepted, of being rejected.

Romans 12:9 tells us we must be sincere, authentic; that love is sincere and authentic. The Passion translation puts it this way:

Let the inner movement of your heart always be to love one another, and never play the role of an actor wearing a mask.

No more masks; no more pretence! If you are someone who interacts with me on any level, you have my genuine permission to be real with me. I will try with Holy Spirit’s help to allow you to be real, to respond in a way that makes it safe for you to do so and to be real but loving in my response to you.

The real, authentic, God-intended version of you is worth revealing and is worth celebrating!

For the sake of the body of Christ, for the sake of the world and the calling that God placed on you to impact this world, let’s agree:

I’m going to unashamedly be me!