Becoming Real

Have you ever felt like a Christian poser. You know the right things to do and the right way to be, but the thing you would do to honor Christ you do not! You feel like beating your head against the wall to knock some sense into yourself, especially when it comes to learning to love others. Did you know that even the apostle Paul had a problem with doing the right thing?

Romans 7:14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

This book, The Velveteen Rabbit I read to my children when they were small brought home the importance of being real with God and those around us. I recommend the book to every Christian who feels like a poser. Here is excerpt from the book:

What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse.  “It’s a thing that happens to you.  When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”  “Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.  “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”  “Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”  “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse.  “You become. It takes a long time.  That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.  Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.  But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

When I close my eyes to wonder and meditate on what the expression on Jesus’ face must have looked like as he agonized up the ‘via doloroso,’ his shoulders overwhelmed by the wood of the cross and the weight of the world’s pride like the shoulders of a homeless man, I come face to face with real love.  As the blood from the crown of thorns begins to blur his vision, he stumbles.  And then He slowly rises again.  The scene here isn’t clean and organized, it isn’t systematized or logical.  It’s violent, it’s shocking and it’s real.

Whenever you encounter and receive real, unconditional love from another, like a planted and watered seed under the sun, it cannot help but give birth (often painfully) to a new realm of personal freedom and expression.  This new freedom is what allows us to become our true selves, to express ourselves without the fear of judgment, rejection or ridicule from others.  Finally, we are then free to love others with that same unconditional love, thereby helping set others free from the very chains with which we were once enslaved.  Unfortunately, this unbridled expression of true freedom can often cause friction or even alienation from those who have yet to recognize their own delusion of self-righteousness, lack of forgiveness, and coldness from the invisible prison in which they live, as they become jealous of your joy and envious of your freedom.

See you next blog,
Ted

A qualifier:  This does not mean for those who are abused by their covenant partners in marriage that they must stay within the confines of an physically or emotionally abusive relationship. That is an entirely different matter and is covered in other blogs I have done previously. God never intended for you to tolerate the abuse of your mate!