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Nov 26, 2023 06:00am

He’s Still Workin’ On Me

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One of the best compliments my husband ever gave me wasn’t actually given to me directly. We were at church one Sunday morning, and I walked up behind him while he was talking to one of our friends. I just caught one sentence in their conversation, but it’s a sentence that blessed me to my core and one I will never forget — “The Diane you see at church is the same Diane I see at home.”

That might not mean as much to some as it did to me, but you have to understand how I grew up. My mother was a wonderful person in many ways, but she dealt with untreated mental illness (probably bipolar). That meant, from one minute to the next, I never knew which mother I would have — a mother who seemed to love me or a mother who wished she had never had me.

Mother was an “on again, off again” church attender. When she was at church, she was the epitome of the perfect church member and everyone loved her. But when we got home, or even when we got into the car headed home, her demeanor would change and she’d be a completely different person. To me, she was hypocrisy (pretending to be something she was not) personified!

I’m sure Mother did the best she could as she fought the battle of mental illness, but I didn’t understand that as a little girl. I just vowed that I never wanted to be like her in that way. I always wanted to be authentic, a “what you see is what you get” kind of person. So when I heard Pat say that to our friend, I knew I had succeeded to some extent — at least in that one area — and it thrilled my heart.

Doing some research for this article, I discovered that Jesus didn’t like hypocrisy much either! He talked about it at least 18 times in the Bible and never in a good way. The term He used usually referred to a stage actor, someone who pretends to be someone she or he is not, and Jesus never minced words when He denounced it. He was especially critical when he was talking to church leaders but I’m sure His words apply to all of us. We may think we’re pretty special and that we have people fooled, but He sees right through us:
“Woe to you… hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matthew 23:27-28 NIV).
“These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Matthew 15:8 NIV).
Why do we feel like we have to put on a show for people? Why can’t we be real and admit our failures and faults? Perhaps it’s because we feel that if people knew the real us, they would reject us.

One of my favorite contemporary Christian songs is “Truth Be Told” by Carly Pearce and Matthew West, and it talks about this very problem:

“Lie number one, you’re supposed to have it all together; and when they ask how you’re doing
just smile and tell them, ‘Never better.’
“Lie number two, everybody’s life is perfect except yours. So keep your messes and your wounds and your secrets safe with you behind closed doors.
“Truth be told, the truth is rarely told… I don’t know why it’s so hard to admit it
When being honest is the only way to fix it. There’s no failure, no fall, there’s no sin you don’t already know. So let the truth be told.”

There you have it — the cure for hypocrisy is telling the truth!
One of the things we always told our children was, “Good, bad or ugly, straight scoop! Tell it like it is, and we’ll deal with it!” I think that’s what Jesus was saying — “Be real… come to Me, just as you are, and we’ll deal with it.”

Does that mean we have to lay out our dirty laundry in front of everyone? Probably not, but we also shouldn’t pretend we don’t have any! “You can’t keep your true self hidden forever; before long you’ll be exposed. You can’t hide behind a religious mask forever; sooner or later the mask will slip and your true face will be known” (Luke 12:2 MSG).

Fellow Christian, be real and you’ll be able to reach others for Christ.

For those who haven’t accepted Christ as your Savior yet, please be patient with us. We’re just sinners saved by grace, so we’re a long way from perfect. It’s like the song my children used to sing: “He’s still working on me, to make me what I ought to be. It took him just a week to make the moon and stars, the sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars. How loving and patient He must be ‘cause He’s still workin’ on me.”