One of my favorite movies is The Avengers. There aren’t too many people that watch that movie and the decade of movies that make up the Marvel Cinematic Universe and dislike it. There’s a scene where Steve Rogers (Captain America) and Tony Stark (Ironman) are having a clash of personalities in a tense moment. Steve Rogers is an older soul shoved inside of a military and traditional minded super soldier's body, while Tony Stark is a know-it-all, good time, successful modern day smart mouth. In this altercation, Steve Rogers says to Tony, “Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?” In typical quick witted Tony Stark fashion the reply, “Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist” is sharply muttered from Tony’s mouth.
What’s fascinating about the Ironman character is that people know who he is. He’s not like Bruce Wayne who works hard to conceal that he is Batman (I hope you read "Batman" in a gravelly, almost exhausted, voice). He is not like Peter Parker who works as a photographer and gets paid for getting these impressive shots of Spiderman just to cover the fact that he is actually Spiderman. Tony Stark comes right out and admits to his alter ego Ironman that was built on this genius billionaire platform. This allows Ironman to live honestly and vulnerably as you see throughout the Ironman movies as he gets credit for saving the day, but also has his mansion on the side of a cliff blown up (you should really consider watching these movies if you have not). Tony Stark is free from having to act one way that would be detrimental to his actual character. He doesn’t have to sneak around or tip toe about what he is talking about or who he is talking to about certain things. He has nothing to hide and nothing to gain from being secretive. He is everything that he says he is, which can have its flaws as well, but for what is on the table today, he fits the illustration perfectly.
Personas and Persons
We live in a culture that seems to put more stock into personas than the person. When you scroll through your various social media platforms, its hard to discern whether the person on the other end is legit the way they present themselves online or they are just trying to gain an audience. The key to unlocking the social media world’s secret is knowing that everyone isn’t perfect all of the time. Once you realize that, it’s much easier to not fall into the comparison traps that are set before you. Everyone will post the highlights. Even if people post their past, it is to highlight the present. There is no escaping the truth that everyone has issues and everyone struggles, so to think that these people who seem to live perfect lives have it all figured out or have no faults is to place them on the same level as Christ. That should automatically send red flags into the air. Are they really like this? Do they really live this life that they are proclaiming on the internet?
Social media aside, we do this to people we know as well. Whether they inspire you or you have a strong connection to them, it is easy to think the absolute best for them and overlook the worst. It reminds me of a quote I’ve seen shared on social media a thousand times that goes, “A person’s true character is revealed by what he does when no one is watching.” Put differently, the quote may say “Who a person is may be discovered by what is done in secret.” We are so entangled by what they proclaim and how it affects us individually that we fail to evaluate how they act in a crunch to see how honest they are or if they actually believe what they proclaim. At the end of the day, it is easy to place someone you look up to on a throne when that throne belongs to The Lord Almighty. But how does this happen? How do we place certain people in our lives so high that we can neglect their behavior because what they say is so inspiring? Better question, and one that I am way more interested in answering today, how do we do this with ourselves? How do we place ourselves in situations where we find ourselves not acting in line with the truth we proclaim? If we are to act so that we can tell the truth about how we act, where do we start?
Sin Is The Default Response
If there were ever a group of people in the history of planet Earth that should be able to back up their words with their behavior, it’s Christians. We claim to believe in the absolute truth of our creation in the Garden of Eden, deceived into sin which led to the fall of man, Christ being born of the virgin birth, living a sinless life for 33 years and crucified on a cross by religious folk for our sins, confirmed dead and buried for 3 days in an actual tomb, resurrecting physically in the newness of life, ascending to be with The Father until the appointed time, and patiently waiting to make His return. That is broadly what we believe even though there is so much more to it than that. That is the meat of it. We are instructed to tell the truth because we have been saved to The Truth. If that is so, and it is, why do we sometimes fail to act on the words we profess to believe? The answer is sin. Sin is when act outside of The Way in which The Truth has given us issued us in new Life. We too often forget (with regards to ourselves anyway) the “bad news” that makes The Gospel so good. We are sinners. We are ALL not only capable of sin, but consistent practitioners of sin. Romans 3:23 states plainly “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” and I’m not sure about you, but when I read that, the world “all” is emphasized in my mind every time. There is not a single person to ever live with the exception of Christ who that does not define. Christianity is an acknowledgment of your own short comings and openly admitting your need for a Savior to rescue you from all the sin you despise or even hold dear. When you come to The Lord after He has broken you initially, you will spend your life coming back to The Lord in sorrow for how bad you messed up but in joy because you know He has already paid that debt for you when you didn't deserve it. Though in our sinfulness, we can sometimes forget that we are co-heirs of the throne and do our best to boot The Almighty off of it so that we can take His place. In other words, we too often like to believe that we are in the right and act as if we have done no wrong, thus taking the words of Scripture projecting them as invalid or without authority. With this context in mind, this is where we will have a solid answer for how we act differently than we believe.
A Life of Repentance
If you proclaim that God is good all of the time, whether you’re in the valley or on the peak, but you grumble and complain in the valley or brag and boast on the peak…
If you proclaim that a husband should love his wife as Christ loves the church, yet you treat her as a maid or an object of your pleasures…
If you proclaim that “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain” yet you are lusting after another person instead of valuing the godliness of your spouse and holding it above what your eyes can see…
If you say you love a brother or sister in Christ, yet you find yourself building contingencies on the relationship that are usually built on personal desires or self righteousness instead of the foundation of Christ…
If you profess to loving your neighbor as you love yourself, yet you get angry with them over the slightest inconvenience or you do nothing but gossip about them…
If you say you love the church, yet are discontent with what is being doing based on personal preferences…
If you proclaim that children are a blessing, yet you consistently deal harshly with them…
… then you are acting in a way that does not line up with what you proclaim, thus sinning and in need of repentance.
Reputation and Character
This list can go on and on because sin is abundant. Christians are sinful people that desperately need to be saved, yet in many cases we do our best to justify that sin to save our reputations or image. Thomas Paine once said, “Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.” Proverbs 22:1 speaks on reputation by saying “a good name is to be chosen rather than riches,” but do not think you are the one in charge of that reputation. If it were left completely to you, your reputation would be a degraded version of what you think and would be offensive to your own mind. As a Christian, because you proclaim to be a sinner saved by grace, the most honorable presentation of yourself is not one that is self preserving, but echos the blind man in John 9: “There is one thing I do know: I was blind, but now I see!” That is where true character comes in. There is nothing any individual can do about their own sin except for one thing: own it.
An Opportunity To Respond
You have been given the opportunity through grace alone to own your sin and repent. God is so incredibly gracious and merciful. He doesn’t owe us another second on this earth, yet He gives us one more so that we can repent and run to Him. The question we all have to ask ourselves, in light of how we act, is: What benefit is it to me to act like I have it all figured out or that there is no fault with me when the truth of the matter is I am wretched and depraved. “Who will save me from this body of death?” The only response is for us to bow the knee to our King, confess to Him where we have sinned, repent and be restored in reconciliation. The Christian must be more than willing to confess where they are wrong and when they have done wrong. The Christian must be aware of how easy it is to place themselves on high when they feel the need to blur their own sin. When a Christian exalts truth through how they act, they are showing the world of how good God is. When they make a lifestyle of doing that, it becomes their character in spite of their sin. When that becomes their character, that becomes their reputation. When that becomes their reputation, that is what it means to be a living sacrifice, and that is what we are called to be. “I must decrease, and He must increase.” May we act so that we can tell all the truth about how we act. We were blind, but now we see. Let us act accordingly.
Comments
Post a Comment