"As they passed the rows of houses they saw through the open doors that men were sweeping and dusting and washing dishes, while the women sat around in groups, gossiping and laughing.
"What has happened?" the Scarecrow asked a sad-looking man with a bushy beard, who wore an apron and was wheeling a baby-carriage along the sidewalk.
"Why, we've had a revolution, your Majesty -- as you ought to know very well," replied the man; "and since you went away the women have been running things to suit themselves. I'm glad you have decided to come back and restore order, for doing housework and minding the children is wearing out the strength of every man in the Emerald City."
"Hm!" said the Scarecrow, thoughtfully. "If it is such hard work as you say, how did the women manage it so easily?"
"I really do not know," replied the man, with a deep sigh. "Perhaps the women are made of cast-iron.""
- L. Frank Baum, "The Land of Oz"
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
On his solo blog, Jared wrote a poignant post on the nature of duplicity. It's aptly titled, "Who You Are When No One's Looking Is Who You Are."
Here's a taste:
This week retired NFL quarterback Steve McNair, one of my family's favorite athletes, was found shot to death from an apparent murder-suicide with his twenty year-old drug addict girlfriend, whom he was cheating on his wife of 12 years with. Most everyone was shocked, including people like my wife who thought he was sweet and nice, especially after she ran into him at a local eatery once and he gave her a hug and spent a minute chatting with her.
His friends and teammates have been saying things like, "This wasn't Steve." They're talking about the "real" Steve, the Steve who did charity work and gave the fabled 110% on the football field, as if this Steve, the Steve who maintained an adulterous, drug-addled relationship, was not real, or at least, not really him, but just a mistake he made, as if adultery is something you trip into or catch like a cold.
But the Steve McNair we didn't see was the real Steve McNair. The one he showed us was not. Or at least, it wasn't the fullness of him.
And who I am in the moments when I know I don't have to perform for anybody, the who I am in my heart and mind, what I'm thinking and feeling and wanting to do and what I'm doing when I don't think anybody will find out -- that is me. The real me.
We are not good people who make mistakes, none of us. We are sinners, always. We are sinners who need to repent.
So long as we think of the grossest parts of ourselves as "not really us," we will fail to respond to and wonder in the gospel. Because if the real us is already okay, we need no rescue.
He's right. If you're a pr()n surfing husband, an adulterer, a thief, a liar, or a millionaire ex-quarterback with a double life, the real you is the person you are when no one is looking. The question to ask yourself is, what do you default to when no one is looking?
"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).
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Comments on "Jared On Duplicity":
2. Les
- 07/09/2009 8:56 pm CDT
Thank you, Bird, for this reprint and powerful post. And Jared for writing it. As for my real self, I must put it to death daily, and bury it deeply in God's immeasurable grace and mercy, which, thankfully, overwhelms the real me. I bury me in Him, and meditate on Him, and in doing so become more like the image of Him that He created in me.
His love is EVERYTHING. I don't want anything else. As Paul Walton intimated, I can't even breathe without Him. Because He loves me so much, my continual repentance enfolds me in His arms. It is the most freeing experience I have ever had.
3. Karl
- 07/10/2009 9:10 am CDT
I would say yes and no. Yes to the reality of sin. But no if the post implies that the "only real" or "most real" McNair (or me, or you) is the one that sins in secret. That's assuming McNair was a Christian, as he professed to be.
Was the Real King David an adulterer and murderer? Yes. Was the Real King David also a man after God's own heart? Yes. If applied to David the post would seem to imply that the "Man after God's own heart" was a false front that David chose to show the outside world and the "Real David" was defined by lust, adultery and murder. I don't think it's that clear cut in David's case or McNair's or ours.
I agree with Lewis when he says that what we do when our guard is down or when we're alone reveals truth about the condition of our heart - and I think that's primarily what is being said here in the post. But I also think it's too easy especially in circles that emphasize total depravity, to leave a person defined only and totally by the secret sin and to call everything else "not really them." Most people are a mixed bag IMO. The "real" McNair was an adulterer and liar. But the "real" McNair was also capable of great acts of generosity and kindness and was in many ways an admirable guy who shouldn't be *solely* remembered for his sin.
I think the post covers it with "Or at least, it wasn't the fulness of him." But that is offered almost as an afterthought when I think it's pretty key. The fulness of McNair includes both the secret life and the public life (and the good things that happened in private too, like his treatment of the author's wife and countless others like her and his relationship with his kids). IMO it's no more accurate to say the "real McNair" was a liar and adulterer and leave it at that, than it is to say the "real McNair" was a loving father and pillar of the community and leave it at that.
5. nhe
- 07/10/2009 12:33 pm CDT
Karl, I don't think that is different than what Jared is saying......Jared is referring to the default mode of our heart (redeemed or not).....David wasn't kept out of heaven for his adultry and murder, nor was he granted heaven because he was a man after God's own heart.....he's with Christ today because he was a duplicitous, sinful man, saved by grace......hence Romans 5:8.
Who any of us are when no one is looking is woefully short of what it should be. The McNair example is extreme.
On a side note, I do think that the sense of entitlement that comes with being rich, famous, and loved (that McNair had) creates a blind spot and a stronger tug toward fulfilling one's own sinful desires than any of us common folks have ever felt. I don't know if I would be able to walk in McNair's shoes and have self-control - do any of us know if we would?
6. Karl
- 07/10/2009 1:39 pm CDT
nhe, I agree with most of what you wrote. But as a bottom line about David you say "he's with Christ today because he was a duplicitous, sinful man, saved by grace."
I would say that is true but incomplete. Completely true as far as why David is with Christ - on the basis of grace alone. Incomplete or only partially true as it describes and sums up the man. Yes, he was duplicitous and sinful. He was also (as you acknowledge earlier in the post but don't include in the sum-up) a man after God's own heart. So he was a man after God's own heart who was also sinful and duplicitous and who was saved by grace. He was a mixed bag. He was saved by grace.
Although grace is McNair's only hope, if we're going to sum up the man we leave out some important things if we just say "he was an adulterer and liar" - just as much as if we try to sum him up without acknowledging his adultery or deceit.
As far as the "default mode" of one's heart, I think it's more mysterious and less clear cut than that for the believer. If one is a new creation in Christ, if one has had one's heart of stone replaced with a heart of flesh, if one is being transformed into the image of Christ, is being sanctified in addition to having been justified, then I believe that the "new creation" side of the equation can begin to come into play and replace some of our previous "default modes" with new ones as Dallas Willard writes about in The Divine Conspiracy. Not fully, perfectly or completely this side of eternity. But significantly.
Even for the unbeliever, there is always room for de-provement (i.e. the opposite of improvement; getting worse and worse, more and more self absorbed, deeper into evil). So, what do we mean about total depravity or something being the default mode of the unredeemed heart, when some unredeemed hearts are worse than others - though no heart is "good enough" to earn salvation?
7. nhe
- 07/10/2009 2:22 pm CDT
Hmmmm.....Karl, I guess I would ask if you agree with the earlier statement - "who we are when no one is looking is who we are"......granted, its not ALL that we are, but I think it is the clearest window into what becomes evidence of our depravity.....so in that sense I'd agree with that statement.
The main point of the original post I think being similar to Romans 2 - the man we perceive to be moral and upright is without excuse before God......because, though he thinks himself to be a man of integrity, he is duplicitous by God's standard - which judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Jared points out then that McNair's story is an extreme of what is true of all of us who would claim to have integrity.
This is not to say that we are not singled out by God for our virtuous qualities, as David clearly was.......but David's righteous deeds were still filthy rags.
8. Thinkling Jared
- 07/10/2009 7:11 pm CDT
What nhe said.
Our righteousness is filthy rags and all that.
I get what you're saying, Karl.
For me personally, I'm at the point where I choose to believe that anything good in me or coming out of me is the work of God and his grace. Everything else is on me.
Christ in me is my hope of glory.
10. G. Frederick
- 07/11/2009 11:04 am CDT
"let me explain"..NO thre is too much.."Let me sum up"
I think our lives are one big SUM up a sinner saved by grace because "there is too much". But any sum up is inevitably inccomplete and unfair. I am just glad that I don't get what I deserve...I get grace...I deserve HELL.but to simply call me a sinner is incomplete...because I am also a father who loves his children...a man who loves his Saviour...but only because of grace am I saved from what I deserve.
11. Karl
- 07/13/2009 9:19 am CDT
I hesitate to post again b/c I think Jared really does get what I'm saying, and I don't want to just be argumentative. At the same time, the "I'm nothing but a piece of crap" take on our own depravity can go farther than I believe God intends.
Do any of us as parents like it if our children have an over inflated ego? Of course not, I hope. Do we prefer that they think they are totally worthless and have nothing to offer us or the world? Of course not, I again hope. The human parent-child analogy is imperfect, but I think it carries some truth about our Father's heart toward us, his beloved children and creation. Telling him that the deepest truth about his children is that they suck (yeah, they're covered by his Son's blood but underneath the blood the single deepest and most true thing about them, the only bottom line on them, is their suckiness) - doesn't seem to square for me. Not with scripture, nor with the heart of a father, nor with God as maker.
The suckiness is undeniable. The fall had and continues to have disastrous and unavoidable consequences. We are all "bent ones" to borrow a C.S. Lewis term. And yes, even our righteousness is as filthy rags, etc. But to use another Lewis metaphor, we are also tin soldiers who are in the process of being made real men. Not just tin soldiers covered with a white blanket so nobody can see they are still tin. Yeah, it's only by grace that it happens. And only by common grace that a nonchristian does any good deed. But I think it's overstating or mis-stating total depravity, and denying glory to the Maker, to say that the bottom line about all those he has made is that they just totally suck and nothing else, period.
nhe, I agree that who we are when nobody is looking tells something true about who we are and can't be left out of the equation. But I bet in addition to his sin, McNair did a lot of good and nice things when nobody was looking and he didn't have to do them, too. And those things are true about him as well. Salvation keeps getting dragged into this discussion but I'm not suggesting that the true, good things in anyone's life are adequate for their salvation, nor that their ability to do those good things didn't come ultimately from God.
G. Frederick in #10 probably "sums up" what I'm trying to say a lot more succinctly.
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What I do when no one is looking is the real me, and sometimes it ain't pretty. Paul said we need to work out our salvation daily, with fear and trembling. Repentance is not a one time deal, I need to repent each and everyday. The real me, needs Jesus, every minute, of everyday.