The Inner You

We were watching Dances With Wolves the other night – Dances with Wolves falls in love with Stands With a Fist. Smiles A Lot is their young friend. I was interested to know what my family thought our Indian names would be.

We agreed one son could fittingly be called “Smiles a Lot” too. Another was dubbed, “Passes Gas A Lot”. I can’t tell you what Jennifer’s Indian name was. Suffice to say I “Laughed A Lot” and later became “In Trouble A Lot”. When I asked my son what my Indian name should be he said, “Busy A Lot”. Heh, heh. . . wait, not as funny. I wanted him to say something like “Plays With Us a Lot” or at least, “Big Chief Dad.”

What I got was a blow too close to reality. It’s interesting how others really see us as opposed to how we wish to appear and present ourselves.

Remember Jesus used the word hypocrite to describe those who “do not practice what they preach.” Jesus is only person in the New Testament to use this word. It is part of the vocabulary of the Western World because of Jesus. Archaeologists have excavated a large city named Sepphoris which was built by Herod when Jesus was a boy. This city was visible from Jesus’ little village of Nazareth, and this city contained a giant amphitheater where actors who put on plays were called hypocrites. The actors would put on masks and play their parts, and then at the end remove them and asked if the audience would applaud their performance.

Jesus teaches us that when we want the appearance of being good without the reality of being good, we are actors on a stage. We are hypocrites.

Someone has said that hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue. “It is also the pain that actors feel when the applause dies away.”

We try to take short cuts around the rules so we can have it our way and still maintain the appearance of goodness.

The IRS maintains what is informally called a “cheater’s account,” to which people with guilty consciences can send money they know they owe. There’s an old story that IRS received one letter that read, “My conscience is bothering me because of cheating on taxes, so I’m sending $10,000. If my conscience doesn’t clear up, I’ll send the rest of what I owe.”

I remember cheating on schoolwork in Junior High School. It was in science class. We were assigned individuals labs and workbooks. Everyone had to do the same work but it was at your pace. Obviously, there was more prestige and satisfaction for those who got farther faster. But it was, I thought, tedious “busy work.” I said to myself, I can do all this stuff, it’s not hard, but it’s boring. So what I did was, I found a friend who was a little bit ahead of me on the independent assignment and I “borrowed” his workbook and began copying his work into mine. I did this for about a week think, until one day my teacher caught me cheating. He embarrassed me and threatened to have me kicked off the basketball team. I was outraged. He was being grossly unfair. After all, I was a smart student and it was just “boring busy work.” When I didn’t show enough remorse the teacher wondered if I thought my parents should know. Well, no, I wasn’t outraged enough to involve them. I would take my punishment. And boy, did I. My classmates didn’t applaud my performance. They just stared. It was one of the best things that happened to me. But I still wince when I think of that time.

We break rules when we think we can get ahead or do better. But in breaking the rules we sacrifice our integrity. We become inside the very kind of person that is increasingly incapable of gratitude and purity of heart that makes happiness and meaning possible. John Ortberg says, “Strictly speaking, I cannot break the rules. They endure, for they reflect the way things are. I can only break myself against them.”

Another mistake people make is substituting behavior modification for integrity. In Jesus’ day this was the strategy of a group known as “the blind and bleeding rabbis.” They were so called because they would not only never speak to a woman, but they would close their eyes when one came into their peripheral vision and so were they forever falling off curbs and bumping into buildings.

Jesus responds in this way, “If God’s goal for you is sin avoidance or behavior modification, here’s a good idea: whack off any part of your body that might do something wrong, and you’ll roll right into heaven a mutilated stump. There is more to integrity than sin avoidance. My eye, hand, and foot are not the problem. The problem is my heart.

If my primary goal in life is to keep up appearances or avoid sin, then I will never have integrity. I never truly be good. I will always merely be an actor on a stage. The pursuit of integrity sometimes smashes appearances. “To make an omelet you have to break a few eggs.”

But integrity is always the best thing for us. God’s truth always helps us.

Listen to the prophet Isaiah:

Behold my servant, my chosen, I have put my Spirit upon him, he will bring forth justice. . . but he will not cry out or lift up his voice in the street. He is so gentle that a bruised reed won’t be broken, or a dying candlelight quenched.

In other words, Jesus, the Chosen Servant, will not hurt God’s people with the truth. He will set us free. He will bring us good things; the things we truly long for when we been fumbling around with our shortcuts and cheating.

Behold, the former things have passed, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.

The new thing is heart surgery. The new thing is Jesus Himself, present with us. When we repent of our hypocrisy and believe Jesus, we are baptized with His Spirit. Inward change, which is the only real and lasting change, takes place. Jesus transforms us from the inside out.


First step – Repentance. Admit you’ve lied, cheated, play-acted - we all have.

The rock band, R.E.M. has this lyric, “That’s me in the corner. That’s me in the spotlight losing my religion.”

You can’t have religion if you’re in the spotlight of pretense all the time. Lose the pretense. Confess your sins and you will find true religion.

Be baptized in water as a sign of your repentance and a sign of the baptism of His presence. Begin the walk of integrity with Jesus.

Austin Farrer asks, “What are we to do about the yawning gulf which opens between this Christhood of ours and our actual performance; our laziness, selfishness, triviality. . .this gulf which yawns between what Christ has made us and what we make of ourselves?
We do what Jesus’ disciples did: on the first day of the week, we gather to reassemble the whole body Christ here, not a member lacking, when the sun has risen; and have the Resurrection over again.” We come and be church.

We remind ourselves that we are baptized. That’s our name. My name is baptized. My name is “Loves Jesus A Lot”. And that’s no acting.