Reputation // Apples // FellowSHEEP
We care a lot about our image. Our reputation. Nevertheless, our reputation is completely worthless. Does it actually matter what people think of us? We have a tendency to focus on our words and on our reputation. James speaks of how we "do not merely listen listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says" (1:22). There is a tendency to focus so much on if we look Christian enough. We run the risk of being a nominal Christian. We run the risk of "speaking in the tongues of men and of angels," yet being "a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal" (1 Corinthians 13:1). We run the risk of speaking with human eloquence and missing the point of Christianity. We miss the point of our relationship.
C.S. Lewis speaks of compartmentalization.God requires all of us and we cannot hide any part of us. There is no secret part of our sin where our fleshly desires or sin can reside. We can hold no part of us back from God. We cannot live in sin and have the Spirit dwell in us. Lewis explains God's desire for all of us as love and states, "For He claims all, because He is love and must bless. He cannot bless us unless He has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, He claims all. There's no bargaining with Him" (The Weight of Glory, 190). We cannot withhold. We cannot hide. We must surrender all. We are "renouncing this attitude" of compartmentalizing (192).
For me, this compartmentalization, this speaking in eloquence, this reputation, this image has been my safety net and my mask. I suppose the only way to explain this is to write about my past year. to begin, I want you to picture an apple tree. There are two apples. One apple is wrinkled and old. this apple has been hidden in the bottom branches for sometime. It is not being properly cared for or fed into, but it clearly needs the work. The second apple is bright and shiny and red. It's skin has been freshly waxed and it hangs from a middle branch, clearly seen. We are apples. I am an apple. There are points in my life, when I am that wrinkled apple and people feed into my life and God restores me. But there are other times when I am that red apple, where the only care I get is a good waxing of the skin because I look healthy. A lot of the time, I just get waxed at church, because no one wants to peel away their skin and expose their insides: the flesh of the apple.
At the beginning of my freshmen year, I was one wrinkly apple, but I knew that I was fallen and constantly sought God and desired to be healed. My sins and failures were evident in my life, but I was relying on God and I was being fed by other Christians. As the year passed, I began to look healthier. I could talk the way a good Baptist girl talked and speak of revival and spirituality and glorifying God, but inside, my flesh was rotting. I was a shiny red apple, but I was covered in worms on the inside. Then I was asked to be a spiritual leader and worried that my worms would poison that entire barrel. As I was feeding others with my fruit, would they bite in to find rotting flesh and hungry worms? When I look spiritual healthy and feed into others, I run the risk of feeding them worms. One bad apple ruins the bunch.
At my lowest point, when I was most broken and least "myself", I was closest to God. When I had given up hope and no longer possessed the desire to go on. When I was fallen, God carried me. I may have been an ugly apple, but that was the purest me. I was not hiding behind a mask of perfection, but honest about my sins. That was when I was glorifying God the most. We have a tendency to hide behind these masks of perfection where we sit in our pews on Sunday and act like nothing is wrong. I want to get past our disguises and hit that ideal church where those who are struggling in one area are built up by others who are specializing and really exemplifying it. We are all struggling with something, but because our cardinal virtue and vice are different from others, we can be built up as a community. Paul talks about us being a body and working together (1 Corinthians 12). When we are on our own, we are simply one part of the body. An eye is excellent at gathering images; however, if it remains outside of our community and is not in fellowship with believers, it will see everything backwards. In order to properly function as the body of Christ, we must work in unison for one end, and that is to glorify God and enjoy Him always (Westminster Catechism). How can an eye properly see without a brain to interpret? We must be in community to properly glorify God.
I am tired of pretending to have it all. I want to be able to fall apart in church. We have formed this image of church where we sing songs of worship, but it would be frowned down upon to worship from our innermost being, to dance in the aisles or fall on our knees. We have to stay composed and keep our masks on. It would be a shame if we were real with our fellow believers? It would be a shame if were to bear our souls to one another? So we put on our Sunday best and pretend to be "perfect Christians", when becoming Christian required us to admit that we are as far from perfection as east is to west. There is an image in church that is a chasm. That infinitely deep chasm is sin and we cannot cross it. We are one side of the chasm and God is on the other. The cross unites the two sides so that we may cross the chasm (pun intended). Once we are saved, sometimes I think we forget that we are still on earth. We still fall short of the glory of God. So we put on our Sunday best and pretend to be a good Christian, when in doing so we are betraying our chief belief that we are not good or good enough.
How can we be fed, if no one knows our needs. Paul tell the Ephesians to build others up according to their needs (4:29-32). How can we build each other up if we are not honest about where we are struggling and what our need are? I would even go so far as to say that hiding our sins is the opposite of glorifying God. In hiding our sins, we believe that we can fix it or deceive others. What glory does God get from cleansing us of our sins if no one knows that the sin existed. God has victory over sin and death and we are not giving our sins over to victory by deceiving ourselves and others. James commands us, "Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says" (1:22).
I am a wrinkly, old branch from the bottom of the tree. I'm overgrown and ugly. I am withered in places and my bark is dull. Yet, God chose to graft me into his tree and restore me to health. How can I be fully healed if I am not being constantly fed and pruned and watered? How will I see where I am still weathered and wrinkled, if others do not feed into my life and show me where I could use some extra watering? How is anyone going to need what kind of care I need, if I don't show them my naked branch? How will people know the fruit I am producing? How will people know if I wax all my apples to look pretty and disguise my rotten fruit?
C.S. Lewis speaks of compartmentalization.God requires all of us and we cannot hide any part of us. There is no secret part of our sin where our fleshly desires or sin can reside. We can hold no part of us back from God. We cannot live in sin and have the Spirit dwell in us. Lewis explains God's desire for all of us as love and states, "For He claims all, because He is love and must bless. He cannot bless us unless He has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, He claims all. There's no bargaining with Him" (The Weight of Glory, 190). We cannot withhold. We cannot hide. We must surrender all. We are "renouncing this attitude" of compartmentalizing (192).
For me, this compartmentalization, this speaking in eloquence, this reputation, this image has been my safety net and my mask. I suppose the only way to explain this is to write about my past year. to begin, I want you to picture an apple tree. There are two apples. One apple is wrinkled and old. this apple has been hidden in the bottom branches for sometime. It is not being properly cared for or fed into, but it clearly needs the work. The second apple is bright and shiny and red. It's skin has been freshly waxed and it hangs from a middle branch, clearly seen. We are apples. I am an apple. There are points in my life, when I am that wrinkled apple and people feed into my life and God restores me. But there are other times when I am that red apple, where the only care I get is a good waxing of the skin because I look healthy. A lot of the time, I just get waxed at church, because no one wants to peel away their skin and expose their insides: the flesh of the apple.
At the beginning of my freshmen year, I was one wrinkly apple, but I knew that I was fallen and constantly sought God and desired to be healed. My sins and failures were evident in my life, but I was relying on God and I was being fed by other Christians. As the year passed, I began to look healthier. I could talk the way a good Baptist girl talked and speak of revival and spirituality and glorifying God, but inside, my flesh was rotting. I was a shiny red apple, but I was covered in worms on the inside. Then I was asked to be a spiritual leader and worried that my worms would poison that entire barrel. As I was feeding others with my fruit, would they bite in to find rotting flesh and hungry worms? When I look spiritual healthy and feed into others, I run the risk of feeding them worms. One bad apple ruins the bunch.
At my lowest point, when I was most broken and least "myself", I was closest to God. When I had given up hope and no longer possessed the desire to go on. When I was fallen, God carried me. I may have been an ugly apple, but that was the purest me. I was not hiding behind a mask of perfection, but honest about my sins. That was when I was glorifying God the most. We have a tendency to hide behind these masks of perfection where we sit in our pews on Sunday and act like nothing is wrong. I want to get past our disguises and hit that ideal church where those who are struggling in one area are built up by others who are specializing and really exemplifying it. We are all struggling with something, but because our cardinal virtue and vice are different from others, we can be built up as a community. Paul talks about us being a body and working together (1 Corinthians 12). When we are on our own, we are simply one part of the body. An eye is excellent at gathering images; however, if it remains outside of our community and is not in fellowship with believers, it will see everything backwards. In order to properly function as the body of Christ, we must work in unison for one end, and that is to glorify God and enjoy Him always (Westminster Catechism). How can an eye properly see without a brain to interpret? We must be in community to properly glorify God.
I am tired of pretending to have it all. I want to be able to fall apart in church. We have formed this image of church where we sing songs of worship, but it would be frowned down upon to worship from our innermost being, to dance in the aisles or fall on our knees. We have to stay composed and keep our masks on. It would be a shame if we were real with our fellow believers? It would be a shame if were to bear our souls to one another? So we put on our Sunday best and pretend to be "perfect Christians", when becoming Christian required us to admit that we are as far from perfection as east is to west. There is an image in church that is a chasm. That infinitely deep chasm is sin and we cannot cross it. We are one side of the chasm and God is on the other. The cross unites the two sides so that we may cross the chasm (pun intended). Once we are saved, sometimes I think we forget that we are still on earth. We still fall short of the glory of God. So we put on our Sunday best and pretend to be a good Christian, when in doing so we are betraying our chief belief that we are not good or good enough.
How can we be fed, if no one knows our needs. Paul tell the Ephesians to build others up according to their needs (4:29-32). How can we build each other up if we are not honest about where we are struggling and what our need are? I would even go so far as to say that hiding our sins is the opposite of glorifying God. In hiding our sins, we believe that we can fix it or deceive others. What glory does God get from cleansing us of our sins if no one knows that the sin existed. God has victory over sin and death and we are not giving our sins over to victory by deceiving ourselves and others. James commands us, "Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says" (1:22).
I am a wrinkly, old branch from the bottom of the tree. I'm overgrown and ugly. I am withered in places and my bark is dull. Yet, God chose to graft me into his tree and restore me to health. How can I be fully healed if I am not being constantly fed and pruned and watered? How will I see where I am still weathered and wrinkled, if others do not feed into my life and show me where I could use some extra watering? How is anyone going to need what kind of care I need, if I don't show them my naked branch? How will people know the fruit I am producing? How will people know if I wax all my apples to look pretty and disguise my rotten fruit?
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