Do you remember
the Hans Christian Andersen story of The
Emperor’s New Clothes? It’s about a
vain king and the two swindlers who decided to take advantage of his vanity. These swindlers claimed to be able to weave magnificent
clothing which would be visible to all who were wise, but invisible to fools. They put on a great show of fashioning and
creating these clothes, which no one could see, since there were no clothes;
but, no one in the kingdom was willing to admit that they were unable to see the garments, for fear that they would be exposed to everyone else as the fools they now believed
themselves to be.
The charade
culminated with the king leading a grand procession through the kingdom, naked,
while his courtiers carried his invisible train and the people ooohed and
aaahed at the king’s magnificent attire.
No one wanted to confess the truth because of what they believed it
would reveal about them; until, finally, a little child, who didn’t have a need
to protect his reputation, stated the obvious, “But he hasn’t got anything on!”
I have been told my whole life that
I not only had to get better, but that I most assuredly would get better as I
got older, because I am a Christian and God wants me to be transformed into the
image of Christ. To not get better would be the equivalent of either denying
the power of God to change me, or admitting that I was choosing to block that
power in my life. Fear of acknowledging either of those things has kept me from
being honest.
But, the
truth is, I don’t see that I’m much better than I ever was. As a matter of
fact, I was better at pretending that I was good when I was younger. The older I get the less able or interested I
am in putting forth the effort to hide my faults. I am still not as loving as I wish I was, I’m
still arrogant and I’m still impatient – maybe more now than when I was young!
My New Year’s Resolutions to be more generous or thoughtful have fallen by the
wayside. When I take a step forward in
one area, I lose ground in another. It’s not that I don’t want to change, I
truly desire to be the person I have always believed God wants me to be, but I
just don’t see it happening.
I confess
that my apparent lack of progress has been a growing cause of concern for me over
the years, specifically because, as I mentioned above, I believed that God
wanted and expected me to improve, and that he, therefore, must be offering me
the power to improve, which must then mean that I have been disappointing him
by stubbornly refusing that power, even though I didn’t mean to or realize that I was. When I was young it was much easier to keep
believing in the hope of personal Holiness, that next year or the next I would
see real growth; but, at this stage of my life, it seems prudent to explore alternative possibilities.
I hope
that God truly has been working in me and that, in his wisdom, he has hidden
his work from me because he knows I would just destroy it by being proud of it if I was aware of it.
But,
primarily, my hope rests in the understanding that being “conformed to
the image of Christ” (Romans 8:29), or “transformed into his image” (2
Corinthians 3:18), has more to do with the change that happens in my heart as I
behold in humble gratitude and amazement what he has done for me—that he has satisfied
all of God’s expectations on my behalf and has paid for all of my failures—than
it does with outward changes in my behavior. As I continue to look at him and
not at how I’m doing, gratefully
accepting my complete and continued dependence on him as my savior rather than expecting that
I will need him less and less as I get better and better, I believe that his
image will begin to shine through as my own recedes.
I don’t
want to keep trying to appear wise and good by pretending to be something I am
not. I don’t want to boast about my own
beautiful clothes when I am really naked.
I want to cast my lot as a fool with the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians
1:26-31 when he says,
26 For
consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly
standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame
the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even
things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of
God. 30 And because of him you are in Christ
Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and
redemption, 31 so that, as it is written,
“Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (ESV)
The
only wisdom I have is Christ and the only clothing I have or need is the robe
of His righteousness. I would be a fool not to admit it! What boundless relief!
Love Always,
Bonnie
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