Lose the Costume

I distinctly remember telling myself, "It doesn't matter what other people think about you."

But fifteen minutes into my first day of middle school, the teacher was taking attendance, and when the name Joel Hansen was read off, three boys in the back laughed, like my name was a joke.  Thinking quickly, I told the teacher my name was J.D. (short for Joel David).

This is the beginning of a string of chameleon-like changes in my life.  As I look back to my middle school and high school years, I see many costumes I wore for short periods of time.  Ever year or two I changed my clothing style, my friend group, my way of talking and the music I listened to.  It seems to me that I just got really god at paying attention to what was acceptable, and fitting in to that mold (even if it was the mold of a star wars geek, punk rocker, roller hockey fanatic, etc.).

I am so good at looking around at how I am supposed to talk and act and dress and even think, and then copying it.

I bet you’re pretty good at it too.   

When you go to school, to a sports event, to the mall, to work, to a party, out with a girl, when you come to camp, you are taking time in any setting trying to fit into the acceptable costume.

You spend a lot of time trying to be acceptable.  Most kids talk differently with their mom or dad than they do with their friends.   I have seen it happen at camp where I have walked up to a group as they were talking the way they do with no staff around, and then listened to them change their conversation to “camp appropriate.”  I imagine that you might talk differently around your co-workers than you would with your pastor, or your kids.

The problem is that we blend into the wrong picture.  We spend so much time blending in to the world, than when we go to church on Sunday morning, we often have to put on our Christian costume. 

We can’t treat our faith the same way that we treat all the other environments in our life where we look around and conform to the appropriate behaviors and attitudes just so that we fit in.  We can’t open up the Bible and stand in front of the mirror of God’s law and hope our costume is good enough. 

Our sinfulness is embarrassing enough, let alone trying to hide it or cover it up in front of the God who knows all things.   But God doesn’t ask us to try to cover up our weaknesses and failings.

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

-2 Corinthians 12:9

Our God suffered and died so that we would be acceptable.  No image we create or attitude that we put on can accomplish that task.  And 2 Corinthians tells us that it doesn’t need to.  His grace is sufficient.  And in fact, he desires that we are open and honest about our failings.   

We can stand in front of God, knowing that he choose to love the unlovely.  Knowing that there wasn’t something of worth in us, before his grace entered our life.  But now there is a beautiful new creation growing in us.  And we are the dwelling of the Holy Spirit.

And having the grace and power of God in our life is such a wonderful blessing.  So often, I find myself passing on a story of something that happened in my life and I say, “I am so thankful that God was with me thought that, or patient with me during this time.”

I cannot think of a time when I would say, “I am so thankful that I chose this shirt today,”  “My life would have headed down the wrong path if I hadn’t seen this movie,” or “I am so thankful that I handled that so well, cause I’m not really sure if God could have handled that without me.”

There is no costume required for success.

People often slowly lose their worldly costume while they’re at camp.  They find that they don’t need to look or perform a certain way to be acceptable.   That is such a good feeling.  I suspect it has a lot to with what makes Camp Phillip a great getaway.

But God wants more from us than just temporarily losing the costume for a brief retreat or camp-out.

For example, people come to camp and they love to sing camp songs and those songs mean so much to them, so they delight in the music while they are here.   

When people leave camp, there is a whole other world of music out there that we are supposed to know about to be accepted.   And so we blend in.

But God desires that we would keep the costume off. He would love it if the music that we were sharing, the movies we were talking about, the books we were reading, and the talk we engaged in, would all center on his grace and truth. 

Let’s seek out what is wonderful, or praiseworthy in the world from God’s perspective, instead of learning what the world deems praiseworthy in order to be acceptable in someone else’s sight.