why are we hiding?

Some of you may remember Danielle Cardona's blog post a while back, when she was still a senior at Alma Heights (*sniff*). I copied it over to my blog for your reading enjoyment/commenting, and some of you (Mr. Quiring and Chris, who acknowledged that he was a godless heathen :P) shared your thoughts on it. Months later, here I am addressing it again. Why? Because as I attend school this year, I see more and more clearly what Danielle was talking about. Perhaps it's because I'm an upper-classman, or maybe I've just been a little naive this whole time. But it's a huge, huge problem at our school. People are hiding. Everyone pretends to be a Christian and does whatever they need to do in order to get by. Why would they be driven to pretend all the time?

They hide because of fear of judgment, and rightly so. If one is caught doing something wrong, three things will happen:

1. The whole school will know about it.
2. The whole school will develop an opinion of that person based on what they heard.
3. The faculty will confront/discipline them and continue to do so until they appear to have changed their ways.

I would venture to say that in most cases, rather than actually correct the problem, the person merely shuts down their real self and puts on a mask of ideal behavior while at school, and lives their normal lives when they're outside of school or distanced from a teacher. Certainly there are those who have experienced a genuine change by God's grace and live their daily lives in the genuine, healthy pursuit of holiness.

Then there are those who actually put on the disguise outside of school. They "act Christian" everywhere, at home, at school, at church. But they don't know why they do it, and often get burned out. They're just being good because every speaker, teacher, and authority figure tells them to. They follow God because their parents (or pastor, or teachers) said so. They have fallen into a pattern of Pharisee-ism, and have no meaning in their life. Most often, they have highly emotional experiences during worship or dimly-lighted altar calls, but require a boost of energy every now and then.

Though these people are different, they share two things in common. They are not Christians, and they do not have a proper understanding of the gospel and how it applies to their daily lives.

People have often asked this question: "If we are saved by grace, why are we obligated to do good works, and why is faith validated by our good works?" That's a very good question to which they receive no answer. They either ignore it, or they conclude that the two are noncohesive and therefore decide to go with the Gnostic theory that to God, it doesn't matter what we do, because we're saved by grace. This question is EXTREMELY important, perhaps the most important question to be asked of the entire Christian faith, and yet it is NEVER addressed.

Why is it never addressed? Because the people in authority have given this problem the wrong diagnosis. They think it's because they aren't in a practice of regularly checking themselves and seeking accountability with others. In short, people are just being lazy and uncaring about their faith, and they need to "snap out of it!" Is this really going to solve anything, or is it only going to drive us further down the same hole? People understand that they're supposed to be good. They get it. They don't get why they have to be good. And since no one talks about that, they dismiss it and draw their own conclusions.

It's time for us to wake up. It's time to see the root of this problem, which is not just "spiritual laziness".

In Romans 6, Paul outlines the dilemma of grace vs. works in detail:

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sinÂbecause anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

In The Discipline of Grace, Jerry Bridges discusses this passage in great detail, and I would highly recommend reading what he says about it. According to this passage, there is certainly the idea that we need to offer ourselves as instruments of righteousness and not wickedness, but with the undercurrent of grace. Grace frees us from the bondage of sin and allows us to say "no" to it. It gives us freedom to live life to the fullest, to say no to that which is harmful, and yes to that which is pleasing to God. When one fully understands the gospel of grace and the impact of it on his life, he automatically receives the ability to live a life full of genuine desire to grow in Christ. Rather than trading in the burden of sin and picking up the burden of trying to be good all the time, this passage depticts it as trading in the burden of sin for the freedom of being able to abstain from it. By God's grace, we are able to live Christian lives. Certainly, we don't automatically become perfect, and we will always struggle with sin in our lives as long as we are on this earth. And that's exactly why there's no need to hide from it!

You see, when we realize that grace is what defines us, we see that we are on the same level as everyone else. Christians, though free from the dominion of Sin, still struggle with it. Our righteousness, therefore, is not found in ourselves, but solely in Christ's work on our behalf. When Christians begin to see that they are no more righteous than the prostitute on the street corner, he begins to level with them, to love them, to care about them, and not to judge them. When we stop putting on our perfect masks every day to school and come as we are, without judging others for doing so, we are truly experiencing the freedom that results from the undercurrent of God's grace. When people realize that they are define by grace, they can come out of hiding. They can be themselves: imperfect, broken, often stumbling, but reliant on God's grace for their justification, and not their own deeds.

Now, certainly, when we are filled with this grace, we are equally filled with the desire to do better. So while we are totally honest with ourselves and others, we also strive to lift each other up and encourage each other in our struggles. There's a big difference between that and what's actually going on in the present at our school.

"All our efforts to teach godly living and spiritual maturity to others must be grounded in grace. If we fail to teach that discipline is by grace, people will assume, as I did, that it is by performance." Those are the words of Jerry Bridges.

I'm always praying for Alma Heights, and for the people who go there. Ultimately, God is the one who changes people, who awakens them to the truth of his gospel, and strengthens them in their relationship with him. I pray that he will have mercy on me and on everyone else. I myself am not above judging others by their imperfect actions. I am no more worthy of God's grace than anyone around me.

To wrap this up, I will give an example of judgment that occurs all the time at our school. The Wednesday before last, the speaker asked all those who were willing to stand up for Jesus to stand where they were. Why did he do this? Most people didn't stand up because they wanted to. They stood up because of peer pressure, and because they would be judged if they didn't. Asking people to stand up or raise their hands as a sign of belief is a horrible practice that must be stopped. We don't need to be polled on our fidelity.

For the sake of not increasing this already lengthy post, I will stop here. This problem can be expanded and disputed in many more branches of thought, and there are certainly more questions to be addressed. I do feel, however, that what I mentioned above is the root of the issue. I would like to hear what you all have to say, whether it be agreement or disagreement, and perhaps we can establish some kind of direction in this argument. To those of you who are Christians, I ask that you please keep Alma Heights in your prayers.