I often think about what it means to be transparent as a Christian. I have posted about it before, and lately, while doing a study on small groups, I've come to realize that much of the church body just can't handle transparency.
Transparency requires us to live our lives out in the open. This allows Christians to share each others burdens. When you share a burden, it becomes lighter, just like having someone help you carry a heavy box. We are to pray for each other and encourage one another. We should not judge another's behavior, but rather love them and help restore them to Christian fellowship and walk beside them as they attempt to adjust their life to live according to God's principles.
While I do try to live a life pleasing to the Lord, and I try to be the same person at home, work, and church...am I really? Am I really the same person? Obviously different "sides" of my personality or character will show depending on the environment I am in, but in the end, would all those "pieces" of me join to show the real me? Who I really am in Christ?
I do not share my burdens with my brothers and sisters. I figure people have their own burdens and don't need to hear mine. Is the opposite of that true too? Do I really want to hear other people sharing their burdens?
What do we really know about the spiritual needs of other people in our churches? I think to some extent we all hide behind our stained-glass masquerades. Why do we do this? Are we afraid to be judged? Yes...I think we are.
We are afraid that people will see how pathetic we are.
God sees how pathetic we are. We can't help but be transparent to Him. He sees right through our masquerade.
What would a church look like that lived transparently? Would sin vanish? No, it would not vanish, but it also wouldn't be hidden away and we wouldn't pretend it didn't exist. In fact, only when we acknowledge sin, can we be saved from it.
Our churches are crippled from a lack of transparency. The church can't handle transparency!
Friday, August 10, 2007
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i am trying to unnderstand what you mean by transpa wait scrolling up... back down, transparency? I was reading this earlier and then fell into a deep cat nap. I dreamt about our old farm. A farm that my family and I spent many happy summers on and my husband and I continued to do so long after the rest of the family lost interest.
ReplyDeleteIn my dream I was crying bitter tears. You see my mother sold it right from under me after my father died. It had been his wish to keep it in the family for generations. I had offered earlier in time to buy a parcel of it to help offset the cost of maintaining it, but my mother refused but wanted me to contribute to it's upkeep and she would see to it that I would receive some profit should she sell it. Nothing doing because when it came to money and myself, my parents own oathes could not be trusted as I had learned all the years growing up. I was too independent and successful for their liking well they had bragging rights I suppose....my brother and sister were and still are needy, and have depended on others to get what they wanted out of life taking a backset to hard work. But me, the one who went to college, became a successful nurse with A's all through, looking out for others to help where help was needed and lived by what I interretted were and are Christ's te\achings, was the one they loathed. So be it. I lived the word, they just talked about it.
In the dream i was making my last visit with my husband to say good bye to a very lovely place. Sometrhing that I was not given the chance to do when Ma had it sold.
Would my distrust of my mother show her her as transparent? I could read her. Although she was the most secretive and paranoid person I have ever known, yet she professed to be a God fearing woman devoted to and living by Christs teachings. Every friend she had ever had thought her to be the salt of the earth. I never thought that because without going into detail, she was determined to make my life as misersble as possible in anyway she could. She was a textbook Munchauser. Making me ill all the years I was growing up to get sympathy from those around her.
I was the only one who studied piano in my family and when I moved out or rather was kicked out because my mother was jealous of the fact that I was functional,I asked to take my beautiful Heinzeman with me. I was again refused. They refused it to me for years and nobody else could play it. They were transparent to me while telling others that maybe my wayward 20 year old drug and alcohol addicted brother might take lessons. My pothead teenaged sister might take lessons. But me, without those vices wasn't good enough to have it.
I'll try to make my question and or point clearer here. To think that one is transparent to others ( no back doors about them) but in reality the only thing that is transparent is the distrust and sneakiness in the one who thinkss he/she is treansparent?
I think and admit that I keep pretty much all of my woes to myself. Those who know me well enough can see past my facade and those I concider good friends. They are there for me without having to be asked. Does that make me transparent to others when I think that I am more reserved.
I had never spoke about my beliefs until I met you and Kat online. Having spent all the years my parents were alive witnessing that they did not live by what they ptreached turned me off any topic to do with church or Jesus. I went to church, gave myself to Jesus but I could not verbalize it to anyone but God. I have loved your topics for discussion whether I understood them or not.
As of the last couple of years, I have trusted a few with my troubles and admit that it has lightened my load, a little more so than I thought that prayer was doing for me. But don't they both work together?
Am I making any sense?
Carol