Perfect plastic people with plastic smiles and with flawless plastic lives. Isn’t that what we often strive to be? Or at least how we want to be seen? I’ve wondered (for quite a while now) why that is. Why are we afraid to be real? Why do we put so much effort into hiding the messy and broken things in our lives? Are we afraid that other people will see it…and realize that we’re just like them? I can’t relate to a perfect plastic person, because that’s not who I am. But I can relate to a messy broken person. Yet those types of Christians are hard to find…or are they?
I’ve come to 2 arguments against hiding our messiness.
If we hide our mess we hide the glory of God that has taken place in our lives, and we prevent the glory of God that could take place in our lives. God desires to deliver us from all sin, addiction, and emotional baggage. Yet we prevent it when we hide it. We actually allow it to continue when we hide it. And then there is the mess called our past. If it is our past, that means it is done and over with. We’ve been delivered. We’ve been healed. Why not brag about it as a testament to God’s grace, mercy, and faithfulness? That’s the kind of story nonbelievers want to hear. That’s the kind of God people are searching for.
Our mess makes us relatable. We were made for community. People might want to look like happy plastic people, but they’re searching for people to relate to – people who understand them. I can’t relate to perfect people. I want to be surrounded by people who hurt but are seeking healing…because I’m that person as well. I want to be surrounded by broken people who experience the glory of God because they’re broken.
This is where the world race has brought me. Give me the messy and real Christians over the ones who put up an aesthetically pleasing wall. Give me the people seeking God’s face out of their brokenness and pain instead of the ones who insist they’re happy but are dying inside because they lack their Father’s presence. Give me real.
I’ll end with an excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit, which is a story that used to make me sad but now brings me satisfaction because the pursuit of being real is never a tragedy.
“What is real?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you when a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once like being wound up?” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. Generally by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints, and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are real you can’t be ugly, except to the people who don’t understand.”
