Maintaining Facades

“But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.” (John 2:24-25 NIV)

By and large, most social media profiles paint a positive picture of the owner. Look at most posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. and they usually portray someone who has a happy life and is on top of things. There is excitement, fun, and good things happening. The picture painted is one of a contented and joyful life.  Perhaps this is why research studies increasingly show excessive times on social media can cause depression http://cultureandyouth.org/social-media/research-social-media/social-media-and-depression/ People tend to buy what people are selling on their social media platforms and then see how far short their own lives fall in comparison to others.  

The truth is no one has a perfectly happy and contented life. It is a myth, but one we have tended to perpetuate down through the ages. Before social media made it so easy, people have constantly attempted to make their lives seem better than they are, and, like today, other people tended to believe it.  Our default mode is one that assumes our life circumstances, faults, and sins are worst than most; thus, it leads us away from authenticity to creating an outside persona that seeks to obscure the true reality of our lives. Routinely, celebrities and politicians are exposed as being nothing like that of their public personas, but the fact is we all hide things from public view, whether the state of our social lives, marriages, or our private behavior.  We create an outside that is meant to obscure the reality of the inside.

This becomes a major spiritual problem because the Lord wants to make us whole on the inside, but we hamper His work when we are so focused on maintaining the façade of our lives. This was his main criticism with the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. They sought to look good and righteous on the outside to the people around them, while totally ignoring the major issues they had inside of them, such as self-righteousness, greed, etc. It frustrated Jesus so much that He could not help them, that He let loose on them.
  
Jesus didn’t hate the religious leaders; He loved them.  But their refusal to acknowledge the true condition of their lives and instead to double down on maintaining their façades, drove Him to speak the blatant truth. He knew what was inside of them.

He also knows what is inside each of us. We may fool others, but we can never fool Him. And we shouldn’t want to. He is the One who loves us despite the depth of our sin. But our nature, handed down by Adam and Eve is one that seeks to hide and obscure the truth about ourselves. By doing so, we deprive ourselves of the much needed love and acceptance for which we long, and exchange it for something far less and for which we receive no true contentment.

Today, consider how your outside compares to the reality of what’s inside of you. What are you hiding?  Whatever it is, know the Lord sees it clearly and yet still loves you.  He wants to deal with it, but first you need to let Him by dismantling the façade you have worked hard to maintain.  Then the joy and contentment that has eluded you will be within your grasp. 

© Jim Musser 2017