So, last time I talked about why we care so much about our physical appearances...
Today I wanna talk about why we care so much about our positional appearances.
The questions that run through our head are not usually, "Am I a good person?"...or "Am I strong?"..."Am I smart?" ..."Am I beautiful?"..."Do I have it all together?"...
No,...we can very quickly answer those questions ourselves... The questions that we constantly ask ourselves are... "Do I look like a good person?" ... "Do I look strong?"... "Do I look smart to other people?"... "Do I look beautiful compared to other people?"... "Do I look like I have it all together?"...etc... etc...
We look at ourselves two ways... who we know we are...and who we want to be. And instead of being who we are (a person who is not perfect and has some things to work on)...we PRETEND that we are that person we want to be. We pretend that we are "good"...we pretend that we are stronger than we are,...we pretend that we are smarter than we are... all because we want others to think that we are better than we really are.
Christians are absolute experts at doing this... Every Sunday we are tempted with the opportunity to look more righteous than we really are to our church peers. We dress nice,...we come with our "Praises and Prayer Requests" which sometimes glorify ourselves more than they glorify God. We give Godly advice (that we ourselves never listen to), we point fingers at other peoples' sins and yet never give a full confession of our own. We develop superficial friendships where we can rejoice in all the good we have done, yet we leave our personal home lives out of it. Cuz people don't need to know all of that. Accountability should only go so far as what we allow ourselves to tell each other... not the things we NEED accountability for. We don't want people to know the crap that goes on in our homes,...in our workplace, and much less in our hearts.
Just an example from my own life... I was getting ready for church about a month ago,...got my nice jeans on, my nice shoes on, my nice v-neck on... and then I thought to myself...
"Should I bring a bible?"
Obviously I should bring a bible to church... but I usually use my phone,... just cuz I'm usually carrying around a guitar or drum stuff,...and its just easier to use my Bible App. But I don't think I was taking anything with me this Sunday,...so I asked myself, "Should I bring my (physical) bible?" ...And you know what my answer was? ... YES ... Which would have been a good choice had I not had this sinful thought which followed... "I'll bring my bible because it will look better." I'm ashamed to say this... but, yeah,... that was the reason I carried my bible into the car with me...I thought it would make me look better... it would make me look more righteous than I am, more Godly of a man, and an overall better Christian. I thought about my reasoning as I drove and realized how wrong I was to think that,...so I purposefully left my bible in the car because I didn't want to be tempted to think that as I walked around church.
How often do we do that!? How much more often are we tempted to do that? All the way from bringing a bible to church to wearing a Christian T-Shirt, to doing things like listening to sermons and doing bible studies... even washing your car? Do you wear a Christian Shirt because you want to look like a better Christian? Do you listen to sermons and do bible studies just to say you did it... another check on the list of your "Good Christian" Resume'?
And let me close in on this example,... Do you wash your car because it needs to be cleaned,...or do you wash it because you want to look better in it? I close in on this because...Well, I just washed my car...and let me tell you, it REALLY needed to be washed!...But it is also a good example of how we are with our own lives. Do we clean up our lives,...repenting of sins and doing good deeds because that's what we are called to do as believers and followers of Christ?...Or do we clean up our lives, doing good deeds, listening to sermons, doing bible studies, saying the right words, praying the right prayers... all because you just wanna appear to be a better person than you are?
And let me end on this... it is not bad to do bible studies or listen to sermons or washing your cars or dressing up well for church,...and especially bringing a physical bible to church with you...
Some of our families don't pray together as much as we should... some of us need to be listening to sermons and doing bible studies... Some people need to bring a bible PERIOD to church ...physical or an app... And some people need open up about their personal lives to allow for WAY MORE accountability than they have now...t
The question is,...why do you do what you do... to glorify God, or to glorify yourself?
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