You can’t fake it till you make it - by Charlie Collier
Sometimes it’s just easier not to live in reality. Interestingly, I have found this especially true
for Christians.
Much of my life was living in denial of sin.
When you’re in denial you don’t seem that bad. When you’re in denial and compare yourself to
others, you can actually feel great about yourself.
In the 1971 play My Son Is a Splendid Driver, the main character is reflecting on hearing his 66-
year-old Mother share that that his Father gave her an STD from being with a prostitute while
on a business trip.
“Mother had stopped going to church. ‘Church is just a place to go when you’re feeling
good and have a new hat to wear.’ There was a little bitterness in what she said, but
there was also truth. Our minister would have been the last person in the world she
could have talked to, to have lifted the curse she felt upon her and saved her from
feeling damned. She would have embarrassed the man into speechlessness had she
gone to him with her story. He would have been unable to look at her or my father
without coloring. Most of our morality, I was beginning to think, was based on a refusal
to recognize sin. Our entire religious heritage, it seemed to me, was one of refusal to
deal with it.” (pp. 152-153)
The Church can be an easy place to hide. Ministry can really be an easy place to hide.
It’s a horrible prison.
There is an old church prayer called, the collect of purity. It is prayed together at the start of
the service. The first line says - “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires
known, and from whom no secrets are hid…”
We can’t hide from God and that is so freeing. When you become honest about sin and “have
to deal with it.” You begin to understand that Christianity has some “good news.”
Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable. It is being
loved when you are the opposite of lovable. – Paul Zahl