Walking through the village the other day it struck me that I was probably passing people I know but who I didn’t recognise because of their masks. It’s yet another of those privations we are having to endure in this strange and bewildering time. Cheerful greetings and words of encouragement are all the more appreciated but can’t be given or received because we are not recognised. The psychologists have been telling us for years that we constantly wear masks. Not the physical kind. We seek to create an image of ourselves which is a cover for what is actually going in our minds and in our hearts. For some strange reason I have a memory of a teacher in the course of a lesson saying: ‘You sometimes wonder what is going on behind that sombre face. Or that smiling face.’
There was a book of ‘pop-psychology’ back in the 1970s called Why Am I Afraid To Tell You Who I Am? If nothing else it has a claim to one of the longest book titles! The main drift of the book is a plea for more honest living, that we should not be afraid to share our vulnerability, our pain, our shame, our anxieties. All these things are part of our selves and are more ‘real’ than the masks we create to cover it all. Achievement, success, happiness, strength - these are the things we want people to see.
Fair enough. But what does this mean in practise? Sometimes Anne Robinson went a bit too far in The Weakest Link. She once said to a contestant: ‘I am trying to work out if you are male or female.’ He responded: ‘That’s very personal. And if I wanted to discuss it, it wouldn’t be with you.’ He made a good point. It may be that it is not healthy to be masking psychological or spiritual issues that are pressing on us but neither is it healthy to be indiscriminately laying them on anyone who will listen - whether they want to or not.
It has become fashionable for politicians to appeal to the emotions, to assure us that they ‘feel our pain’. You wonder if this is another kind of mask. One early Christian pastor counselled against opening wide ‘the furnace of our hearts’. This can very easily become another means of self-promotion if not self-indulgence.
Surely what is needed is the same kind of spiritual equilibrium that is shown by the apostle Paul. He was open about his experience of deep inner struggle but he also placed his trust in the grace of God which he believed would help him forward to a more integrated life. He never denied his own vulnerability but nor did he deny the grace that would make him strong in Christ. Indeed it was that same vulnerability that made him strong. To paraphrase an old Christian hymn, his vulnerability created room in his heart for Jesus.
That brings us to the unavoidable truth that no matter what masks we wear we are totally exposed before God. The Psalmist has some breathtaking meditations on that theme:
‘Oh Lord you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.’ (Psalm 139: 1-4)
Now that is disturbing - to me anyway. But I am comforted by the final verse of that psalm:
‘Search me O God and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.’ (vv. 23-24).
We may be unmasked before God but there is a ‘way everlasting’. Despite our fragility and failure we can go forward with Him in confidence. The assurance of this is the eternal sign of Jesus who became sin for us, absorbed the judgement of God, made it possible for forgiveness to be received so that we can aspire to that quality of life where what you see is what you get.
