Walking With Christ

When I look in the mirror, there are days where I see my dad’s face looking back at me. Some days this is a source of great joy. My relationship with my dad was complicated, to say the least, in part, because of the divorce of my parents when I was three. I grew up without my dad in the home so it was easy to form an idyllic view of who he was. He was a superman who could do no wrong. He was incredibly strong and the smartest person I knew. He was larger than life in every way. His laughter could cause mountains to shake and his wrath caused the very stars to quake. I wanted to be like him in every conceivable way. I built my honor system and work ethic around what I had learned through studying the myths surrounding the person I called dad.

Other days, that face is such a source of pain and sorrow. Finding out that your hero’s are human can be devastating. Finding out that they made mistakes or don’t always have the answers can shake the foundations you built your life on. It can make you question everything you knew to be true. It can make you doubt everything you’ve ever been told from everyone you ever knew. Losing that source of truth in this world is devastating to a young mind. Finding out that you never really knew someone is heartbreaking.

The thing is that so much of my personality was based on who I thought my dad was. That formed who I thought I was. I had no such pretense with my mom. I knew that she was flawed from the beginning and that was a part of why I loved her that way that I did. I also assumed that this was part of why my dad loved her the way he did. Mom made mistakes. She tried to avoid taking responsibility for them for a long time and then started trying to take responsibility for things that she had no control over. Dad, on the other hand, seemed immune to such folly.

Until he wasn’t.

How we act or react with any given person is not based on who they truly are. It’s based entirely on who we think they are.

Let that sink in.

We treat people, including ourselves, according to who we think they are. We can blind ourselves to their faults or imagine fault where none exists. We build up our own façade and try to pretend that we are a certain type of person. We want other people to see us a certain way so that they will treat us accordingly. The relationships we build are largely built on the false façade of assumptions.

How does this change how we interact with God?

Matthew 16:15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”(ESV)

How we interact with God is entirely based on who we think He is. Take a moment to examine who God is to you. Take a good look at the limitations of that relationship and why it is that we put those boundaries on it. If we think that God is a prayer operated wish vending machine then that’s how we will interact. We will only go to the machine when we have a need that we think can be filled or solved by going to the machine and hitting the right buttons. That will be the limit of our interaction. If you’ve ever been treated like that then you know it’s not pleasant and obviously not the type of relationship we are called to have, not only with each other, but with Him as well.

Every relationship involves a process of the two parties getting to know each other. For humans here on earth that process is continual. It never ends so long as the relationship is alive. The two parties will constantly need to assure each other that they are who they say they are. With God, God doesn’t change and already knows exactly who we are under the masks. That’s a benefit to that relationship. We can’t hide any part of ourselves. It is on us, then, to spend our time getting to know who He is. That is what we are invited to do when we accept the gift of blood on the cross. We aren’t entering into a contract where we provide this for receiving that. No, we enter into a relationship with the creator of all things and the one who died on the cross to pay for our sins. We were made in His image. He wants to remind us all of who we are to Him as we get to know the image that we were created in. He knows us better than we know ourselves so there is no sense in trying to lie to Him or hide anything from Him. He knows all. He sees all. He wants to remind us of who He sees. He wants us to accept that truth rather than trying to deny who He says we are.

Psalm 139:13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.(ESV)

Our relationship with God is defined by the size of the box we try to fit Him into. Our relationships with each other are defined by who we think the other person is. When we find out those definitions were wrong, we tend to blame the other person. We get angry and feel like they lied to us. Most often it isn’t a case of intentional misrepresentation, but rather, our own presuppositions combined with mismanaged expectations and the skewed reflections we see in the mirror that is the world we live in. God is the only reliable source of truth and the only image we can look to when gauging any actions. When we turn to God to see who we are then encourage others to do the same without judgement or even expectation then we can begin to drop the presuppositions and assumptions that so often lead to mismanaged expectations. This allows us to live in love while showing His mercy and grace because we give all things to Him so that we can focus on the tasks He has for us.