Image Conscious? I hope So!

[HKHaugan]

Faith 10 Image-Conscious? I Hope So!

Are we concerned about how we look when we go out? If we appear at a party where everyone is dressed in a coat and tie and we have on jeans and a sport shirt how do we feel? Why didn't anyone tell me? And, not only that, the party is in full swing and I'm an hour late. Then we have to find someone to blame like the wife, the secretary or someone. It couldn't be me. And what's all this about clothing styles and what is so important about fitting in? When you start thinking about it, why do we put message decals on cars, wear T-shirts with expressions, worry about who is going to pick up the check if we go out to dinner with another couple? Why do we live in the neighborhoods we live in, why do we choose and go to certain schools and then fit into a desired lifestyle?

Also, think about things that embarrass us. Why do we get embarrassed? Have you ever said things that you wish you hadn’t said, done things you wish you hadn’t done and have things that still linger in your memory and you still feel regret, remorse and guilt? Do we hesitate speaking out, asking questions or appearing different from those around us or because we think we might sound or look stupid? Do we get uptight when in a group, judgmental of others’ appearance, words or actions?

If any of these things are part of your experience, then welcome to the world and I do mean 'the world.' This is the secular world of ‘I’, the image-conscious, self-oriented, self-protecting, self-denying and self-first existence. It's not the physical planet. It's the world atmosphere, the invisible dimension that surrounds our conscious existence. It’s a world separated from God and the one into which we were born and the one in which we still live. It is a world saturated with fear, fear of the unknown, fear of exposure of mind, heart and spirit. It's a world where physical life is our identity and death is its loss. It's a world where fear is pain and security is pleasure.

It's the world of what people believe, think, feel, trust, avoid, ponder and cope everyday. It's the world of people, the unseen complex that motivates people, that the one God loved so much that He sent His only Son into it. Let’s face it. It's an image conscious, identity conscious, all-about-me world. We are image-conscious. No one from any level of society anywhere in the world is free from this core human awareness of individual being. The key signature for this world is our own birth. We are born into it alone. You and I and everyone in it are alone and we have to find our way in it to be an identifiable someone.

In the play “Look Homeward, Angel” adapted from Thomas Wolfe’s book, Ben, the older brother of the central character Eugene, philosophically concludes, “Eugene, the world is not outside, the world is you.” Oh, how true for the billions who make up the population on our planet. Is there hope for each of us in our personal world of image-conscious aloneness?

The Scripture offers a real perspective here. Saul, before he was Paul, was alone in his self-quest for personal identity. Enslaved to the acceptance of a religious Law to fit in as a Pharisee, working hard at obeying what he thought it meant to be a Jew, using his ethnic heritage, his bloodline, to enforce his personal struggle on others, all in order to justify himself. His heritage, his ethnicity and therefore he himself was better than anyone else. But the one thing he couldn't deal with was spiritual reality. He was trying so hard to do good but couldn't face the fact that he couldn't be good.

What Paul found trying to obey the Law was his inability to obey it internally. His mind and his heart struggled with something he couldn't figure out. He had to face that regardless of how legally right he had become he couldn’t shake one constant thorn in his flesh (2Cor.12:7). It was an invisible force driving him. He was a coveter. He constantly broke the tenth commandment, ‘Thou shalt not covet (Rom.7:7-12).’ Coveting showed him the real meaning of sin. Sin was not just breaking some rules. It was the 'covet-producer' as well as the instigator of every bad desire in his heart and mind. “But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire (Rom.7:8).” Sin was more pervasive and powerful than his ability to control it. It was always there. He had to give in and say he was helpless and out of control. It stuck in his craw. The harder he tried the more he failed. No wonder he gave himself to persecuting believers in Jesus. They had something he didn't. This is what came to him after he was knocked off his horse, blinded and dependent on others. Remember when Jesus asked him, “Why do you kick against the goads (Acts 26:14)?” The goads are the words of Scripture, the words of the wise (Eccl.12:11). They predicted the Messiah's coming. He was totally dependent on God’s mercy and personal intervention.

This is when He discovered his personal identity, the one he worked so hard to build, was not justified by his obsession with the Law. He had to deal personally, not legally, with the Messiah, Jesus, the perfect Person, God in the flesh, who was perfected by His perfect faith in His perfect Father. His Father's faith in Him was justified. It was the Spirit of justification that raised Him from the dead. It was all about Justification by faith not works. God personally loved him. He had tried so hard and it all came crashing down. It was not working at fitting in but trusting the presence of Jesus, that was what justified him and made him right in himself, right among others and right before God. In faith he found what being an image of God was all about. It was letting Jesus direct His mind, His heart and his spirit by the Holy Spirit. That ‘letting’ was his cross as it ours. He died to his desires, his trying, his hard work, and ‘let’ Jesus live through him to accomplish God’s will for him and for us. Faith in Jesus solved the inner conflict and freed him from the chains of legalism. This is why Paul vowed to always preach the Cross of Christ in and for every situation.

There is another part of this secular world that is very subtle. An experience we practice frequently, a secular image-conscious practice for our personal comfort, a personal experience that only we know in our selves,---and that’s denial. “That’s not me. I’m not self-conscious. I’m not that way. I really don’t care what people think of me. I’m my own person.” Riiiiight! As Shakespeare perceptively wrote, “Aye, and there’s the rub.” We really believe that we are our own person; we are in control. What has just been described is the result of sin, that spiritual disease we spend so much time denying, skirting around and avoiding.

Fitting in is tiresome, draining and consumes so much energy. That we can’t deny. The need to ‘fit in’ is evidence of energy-sapping sin. We need to be free, feel free and act freely. Outside of God we are slaves to ‘fitting in.’ Even if we accept Jesus we still have the nagging reality of that kind of sin burdening us and the need to grow out of it. This is the work of the Spirit. Listen to what Paul says about that, “But whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image (2Cor.3:16-18 NLT).”

That passage says what image consciousness is all about. We can either find ourselves in a struggle to ‘fit in’ to the world without God or we can choose to accept Jesus as our personal master and be guided into freedom, true freedom, wherever and whenever we are. “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father (Rom.8:15)." Then our personal world becomes His world as He gives us His Holy Spirit to make us spiritually image-conscious, the image of Jesus, the exact image of God, restoring us to be living as an image of Him. Then we become His images and partners with Him in reconciling the world to Him. Our identity, our mind, our heart and our spirit find their fulfillment in Him. Should we become image-conscious? I hope so. We are images of God saved by grace through faith (Eph.2:8).