Muse: Pretending

Concealing our true feelings about something so that we don't hurt people, keeping schtum in the face of a delicate circumstance and tactful/constructive criticism are some of the things which many of us learn somewhere past our early childhood.

Civilization schools us in the discreet charm of the genteel; one who has been refined in this process exercises prudence and wise self-restraint in speech and conduct. It is to be part of growing up as well as professionalism. Doctors, for instance, have attained the special communication skills of breaking bad news to patients (and their families); they are never to laugh in front of their patients; they should never look disgusted (I remember that a surgeon once made us smell the tarry stools of a patient during a ward-round, and someone was rebuked for not being able to keep a straight face); and they should certainly appear calm and collected, even while freaking out for their patients' sake.

The practice of self-restraint should eventually effect some sort of personal maturity, as we reevaluate our thoughts, emotional habits and responses, grow in our capacity to empathise with others and learn to communicate our feelings/thoughts in socially appropriate ways. However, it could also be taken to a destructive extreme for those of us who, fearing rejection and yearning for acceptance, put on the masks of pretense that give a sense of false security at first (people like us for seeming so agreeable, easy-going and "nice") but later, wear us out more and more as we lose ourselves to a way of life in which we are often not real. We restrain ourselves from being ourselves.

In reality, I think, we pretend more than we think we do. We pretend conformity. We pretend in order to conform.

And unfortunately, we even do it in our churches (not all, just some) - because of the pressures to be a certain way in order to be accepted. Pastors and leaders face the stress of their congregations' expectations that they should be super-humans. We dress, talk or behave a certain way, because to be different makes us social outcasts. We hide our struggles and pretend that all is well. We think that conformity equals to unity - but they are actually two very different things.

Unity celebrates diversity, while conformity doesn't.

Unity is about reconciliation (despite our differences), love and mutual submission, in response to our common relationship with Jesus Christ who has reconciled us to God. It eliminates the need to pretend - to conform - to have the same opinions as another, the same ideas, the same expressions of worship, etc. Unity encourages authenticity.

Let us have unity in our churches. And so, liberate the pretenders among us!