Do Not “Just Be Yourself”

A popular and almost cliché admonition is to “just be yourself”. The admonition stems from the observation that many people are obviously disingenuous in their social interactions. We run into a salesperson who smiles and uses ploys to get us to buy something we don’t want or need. We may meet a politician who we know is just pressing flesh and flashing a polished smile to get our vote. We meet an individual from the wealthy side of town who we know is just being cordial and hopes to get away from the riff-raff and back out to the golf course or whatever other thing wealthy people do all the time. Or perhaps they are being nice to hide the fact that they have some nefarious intent in mind, like Mr. Potter from A Wonderful Life. Those sorts of encounters leave a bad taste in our mouth. It’s easy to conclude that disingenuous people either don’t like people “like the rest of us” or that they are out to get us somehow.

So if we are counseling someone who wants to make a good impression on someone else, we might say to that person, “Just be yourself.” The idea is that the person we are counseling is really a good person and if that person doesn’t try so hard to be liked, his or her natural personality will be winsome on its own merits. If that person tries to be disingenuous then other people will pick up on it and be turned off by it.

There’s a flaw in this reasoning. Now it makes sense to a degree. After all, most people in our circle of friends come off as genuinely decent people… to us. But few of us are truly what we seem. If you have children, you know the importance of discipline. If you look at Internet forums or comments on YouTube or controversial blogs or news articles, you will be treated to a spectacle of human depravity. The effect of absentee conversations between strangers tends to lower the social expectations that make us civil people. Reading the comments on YouTube, for example, is akin to reading the old bathroom wall. Most of the comments are nothing more than vile graffiti. But what is in the well of the heart of an Internet user comes up in the bucket of the keyboard. Sometimes I just want to be snarky and hammer back with a sarcastic, “Don’t hold back. Just be yourself. Tell us how you really feel.” People are not basically good.

Neither are all people overly winsome. In fact, some people are socially awkward if not just plain creepy. What about people with mental disabilities or conditions like autism? Would they be more winsome if they were themselves?

And what is the purpose of school? We go to school because we are not satisfied with who we are as a reflection of our level of education. We desire to change in a beneficial way. And indeed acquiring knowledge affords us the capacity to increase our wisdom or status. Now it’s not a bad thing to be ignorant, but it’s a better thing to be knowledgeable and even better to be wise. We don’t make the leap without submitting to a regime of education.

Who we are is a result of situations both evil and benign. Most often, we need to change and continue to change in order to grow as an individual. That means we need the discipline of education and the discipline of civil discourse. Therefore, discipline yourself and seek to be disciplined by those who have become what you hope to become.

Also, understand that not being yourself and following the old adage to “be yourself” in the way it is intended are both moral admonitions. Do not be disingenuous so that you might unfairly benefit from your relationship to others, but present yourself appropriately that others might benefit most from their relationship with you.

Hiding Place: Deliverance from Sin or a Prison

Linda

Years ago I was friends with an elderly lady who sang baritone with me in the choir at one of the base chapels at Camp Lejune, NC. Her name was Linda. She died over a decade ago.

Linda’s parents were German musicians who were killed in a train accident just before WWII. Linda spent the next few years in a Catholic school in Berlin during the war. She would take bread to the French prisoners of war.

She invited me to a thanksgiving dinner one year where she had some Austrian friends from the old country coming to visit. The dinner was lovely and I enjoyed the cultural experience. After her friends left, Linda sat down with me and told me of the old days. She told me how she saw the propaganda of the Third Reich and how deeply it influenced her thinking. She also told me how wrong it all was, but how hard she struggled against her indoctrination. She told me how she knew it was wrong to hate Jews, but that she wrestled with her training as a young child to hate them.

She told me other things as well about how brutal some of the Allies were, particularly the Russians. She told me how she came to America and took speech lessons to remove the German accent, How she married and remarried. How evil her second husband was and how he was spending time in Leavenworth prison. Even colonels with spotless records can commit crimes. She told me of her hidden son who lived, yet as little more than a spectre, after a serious automobile accident cause by his use of drugs.

In all of this, she left the Roman Catholic Church and found solace in the gospel of grace. A military wife, she stayed close to the base and the transient families she knew there.

Her story is an echo of many. I’ve been fascinated with how such deceit as what was propagated by the Nazis can affect entire populations of people. Last night I watched a documentary following the children and grandchildren of Hitler’s top men as they fought against the dark legacy of their infamous fathers. It reminds me of the warnings in Exodus where the iniquity of the fathers will be visited on their children and grandchildren. Although their descendents did not commit the crimes of their fathers, they bear the weight of guilt among those who survived their father’s sins.

I’ve also watched Lore recently. It’s a German movie about children of Nazi parents who fled across country to their grandmother’s house when their parents were taken prisoner in the Allies’ invasion of Germany. Many of the reviewers noted that the kids acted like brats. Frankly, they aren’t any worse than the kids Hollywood portrays. It’s odd that we are quick to judge Nazi kids while giving the kids on, say, Home Alone, a pass.

(Note: Being a foreign film, Lore isn’t rated. It should be rated R. There are adult themes and images. Beware if you plan to watch this.)

But I compare this also to the 2009 portrayal of the Diary of Anne Frank. My favorite portrayal was the 1980 version. After watching this one, I see how filtered the 1980 version was. The 2009 version showed a bit more the bratty side of Anne Frank. Are victims less sinful than their murderers?

On the one hand, we would note that a murderer committed a crime. It is no crime to be victimized. However, the nature that rises up to fuel a murderer is shared by all people. We are all products of a fallen world and subject to the dubious information that colors it darkly. It is perhaps more apparent to those with murderous parents, such as the offspring of Himmler, Goering and Goeth. They are more able to recognize the evil in their own hearts because of the astonishing sins of their fathers because of the difficulty in coming to terms with sins they did not commit. For that matter, think of the Jews born in captivity during the exile in Babylon and Persia. They didn’t commit the sins that sent their parents into exile, yet they must bear the burden of those sins.

For others, who have lived in relative peace by parents who are relatively decent people, sin seems to be more of an abstract thing. In this case, fairness becomes the arbiter of sin. It is easy to believe that which is fair is good and that which is unfair is evil. It is easy to arrive at the conclusion that being fair makes one a sinless person.

So it is hard for such people to understand that God is not fair. Jesus, the only truly innocent man, paid the price for the sins of evil people. That’s not fair. It can only be fully understood by people who truly see the depths of their own sin, whether that sin has resulted in action or harbored only in the mist of dark thoughts and desires.

Linda knew the sin she was capable of and fought against it while all around her swarmed the stench and decay of death in the sins of others. Let us not treat slavery to righteousness as a prison when we are hidden from our destruction as Anne Frank and her family was for a time. Let us regard our hideaway in Christ soberly and not despise it. Let us not be brats in the Body of Christ.

5. I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah

6. Therefore let everyone who is godly
offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters,
they shall not reach him.

7. You are a hiding place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah (Psalm 32:5-7, ESV)

Finding True Love In Your Marriage

Mike Leake graciously asked if I would write a guest article to be posted on his site, which I was more than happy to do. The article is entitled "Love in the Trinity" and introduces the basis for a lesson I plan to teach at Equipping University Wednesday night at 6:30 at Western Avenue Baptist Church. That lesson will be entitled "Finding True Love In Your Marriage". If you are looking for true love in your marriage and are in the vicinity of Statesville, NC, come in and learn what it's all about.

Marriage Isn’t Fair

God isn’t fair. What’s fair is if we each pay for the bad things we do. But God says that the penalty for doing bad things is to be eternally separated from him. Too many find out too late that this is an exceptionally unpleasant state of existence. So God did what was unfair to make it possible for some people to spend eternity with him. Instead of requiring them to pay the penalty for what they’ve done wrong, he took on human flesh and paid for it himself. In this way Jesus Christ, the God-man, who was innocent of any wrongdoing, paid for the wrongdoing of sinners with his death on the cross. That’s not fair.

God calls the Body of Christ to do this. It works like this: we are often self-centered. That is, we often perceive conflict as being unfair to us without seeing how we have been unfair to others. If we acted this way, we would always have gripes and complaints about other people who perceive that not only have we been unfair to them, but that we are unfairly accusing them of being unfair. But if we exhibit the love of Christ, then this balances our misperceptions. If the love of Christ was to give his life for ours, then for us to exhibit the love of Christ to others means that we bear the burden of unfairness, real or perceived, between us and other people. The result is that we nullify the false perception of unfairness in others and build trust between us and them.

This works in marriage. In Ephesians wives are instructed to submit to their husbands as the church submits to Christ and husbands are instructed to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Women often balk at the command to submit to their husbands. It’s simply not fair. Their husbands don’t deserve to be submitted to and women deserve as much as men do to have power in the relationship. Now that would be fair. Men don’t balk at the command to love their wives as Christ loved the church, but I think most simply don’t understand what that entails. That means that husbands are to self-sacrifice for her benefit, even if it means giving up his own life for her. That’s not fair, is it? But God doesn’t call us to be fair.

What issue in marriage is greater than wives giving up their freedom in submission and men loving literally to their own death? Does he leave his dirty clothes on the floor? Does she leave her hair dryer on the sink? Does he spend too much on guns, sports and cars? Does she spend too much on clothes and décor? It’s not fair is it? Instead of complaining, if we serve each other in the extreme way we have each been called to, he will learn that he is being unfair to his wife by leaving his clothes on the floor and she will learn that she is being unfair to her husband by leaving the hair dryer on the sink. He will realize that he is being unfair by spending too much on guns, sports and cars, and she will realize that she is spending too much on clothes and décor. Whatever the issue is, self-sacrifice for each other results in being able to see the world through the others’ eyes. The level of trust will result in an abiding marriage that will withstand any challenge. Ultimately, God will be glorified because people will see a married couple living out the gospel of Christ to each other in their daily lives.

The good news is that Jesus didn’t stay dead. How can you keep the author of life dead? If we live sacrificially as he did, then the promise of God is that we will share in the eternal life of Christ. How does this work in our marriage? I propose that spouses who follow the pattern of Christ that they have been instructed by God to follow will have such life in their marriage as will give joy in bad times as well as good times. As one spouse passes into the other world, the remaining spouse will realize without a doubt that their partner is now with the Lord that they served so well. The testimony of the life of the one who passed from their mortal coil will live on in the words of the spouse who remains, their children and grandchildren.

Therefore live unfairly, giving to your spouse more good than he or she deserves without complaint.

Why Do We Educate People?

Al Mohler published a blog article recently about the inequality of families with good parents versus bad parents:

President Hollande wants to end homework in order to level the playing field for the nation’s students. As France 24 reports, Hollande told an audience at The Sorbonne, “An education program is, by definition, a societal program. Work should be done at school, rather than at home.”

He went on to explain that it was unfair for students with parents who are engaged with their schoolwork to gain an educational advantage over others, whose parents do not offer such support.

Dr. Mohler points out correctly that good parents are important for their children, even beyond the quality of education that they receive.

However, I want to take this in a different direction. Dr. Mohler, in summing up President Hollande's statements, points out that it is "unfair for students with parents who are engaged with their schoolwork to gain an educational advantage over others." (emphasis mine) The implication is that education is a matter of competition. In this view, the goal of education is to do better than others so that you can help yourself.

My understanding of education has always been that the goal is for each student to do better at the end of any course of study than what they did at the beginning. In other words, the goal of education is a personal struggle against ignorance.

But that's not and end in itself. There's a larger goal. While we improve ourselves the goal is to contribute positively to society thereby helping others, not defeating them.

An observation I've often made is that it seems more acceptable to tout some talents than others. For example, it seems relatively acceptable for a good leader to say, "I'm good at leadership." But one talent it seems particularly unacceptable to tout is intelligence. If someone says, "I'm exceptionally intelligent," he or she is quickly labeled arrogant. The fact is that some people have a natural predisposition to great intelligence. For some reason people don't think that's fair. And this doesn't figure into President Hollande's idea for a "level playing field."

But this betrays the fact that it is fairly common to think of education, not as a benefit to society, but a benefit to individuals over others. The reason is because many people use greater academic achievement not primarily for the betterment of society, but for their own advancement in society. What most in secular society will ignore is that this is precisely evidence that people are basically evil.

So what are Christians to do?

First, we must recognize the God-given responsibility we have to train up our own children.

Second, we must vie to help them get the best education possible with the goal not of improving their own status, but for contributing positively to society, particularly in the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

So we have to stop looking at education as the means for achieving the best life for ourselves on this earth ans start looking at it as a means for drawing us closer to God by using our talents to help other people.