So this weekend, I attended a youth confrence. The theme was "Redefine", and the first service, the pastor walked up to the pulpit, and introduced himself. A thousand teenagers yelled and clapped and hooted for him, and in the midst of it all, he said "Well guys, tonight, I want to speak on hypocracy." Whew. It got quiet in that room. Nobody was hooting or yelling anymore. He had our attention.
He said "Well guys, I'm going to be very blunt. You might not like it, but I love you, and that's why I'm telling you this. It's become the 'norm' in our culture for Christians to live double lives-to have their sunday and wednesday life and their rest of the week life. It has become expected of Christians to lead two lives...and if that is normal, then we HAVE to redefine normal."
I thought about that statement. Redefine normal. It has become normal for Christians to be hypocritical-myself included. It's like everybody does it, and no one really confronts it. I talked about how i felt about it in my blog "Backsliding really hurts your butt". I've slipped and fallen and led the two-face lifestyle. I talked about the charachter "Two-face" in Batman. How his Harvey Dent side didn't want to be hateful and cruel, but the inhuman side of him did. And when that man said that two-faced lives have become normal, i realized it was true. There are so many Christian "Two-faces" around. We all have our own sins and double lives. Church has become a big "masquerade ball"-we come in dressed up and wearing a smiling mask, and nobody knows who's who.
One time when I was a sophmore or freshman, my literature teacher had us read a story called "The Red Mask of Death" by Edgar Allen Poe. In "The Red Mask", a prince named Prospero and a thousand of his friends locked themselves in a castle to try and escape a disease called the red death. The castle looked out on the city, where everyone was dying-but Prospero and his friends were "safe" inside. While in this castle, Prospero holds a masquerade ball. He and his friends indulge themselves and live luxuriously, when something strange happens. A stranger comes is, dressed like a corpse with signs of the red death all over it. Prospero is angered and demands that they kill the insulting stranger. But the stranger never speaks. It just walks by. Prospero chases the stranger down, and when he finally catches it, he falls dead. Prospero's friends are terrified, and approach the stranger. They remove the stranger's mask-to find that he has no face. The stranger is Red Death.
Isn't that alot how we Christian's are today? We try to shelter ourselves, and hide away from sin. We watch others suffer from it, while we are with our own "church group". We let others outside of our castle die in sin, but it's okay-because we're inside, having fun and living our masquerade ball. Masks, dresses-we look nice inside of our castle. But what we don't realize is that sin creeps into our castles when we don't notice. It hangs out at our party. It walks through our castle. And it kills us and our masquerade party. It deadens us inside, till we are numb to everything, and we keep wearing our masks. The mask becomes normal, an everyday part of us.
When are we going to redefine normal?
I ask you-my generation:
When are we going to redefine normal?
If the mask is considered normal, let's be out of place. Why don't we take off our masks and make THAT normal? The masks became normal because everyone did it. Everyone wore a mask, so it didn't seem odd. But what if every one wearing a mask decided to take it off? What if we made that normal? When are we going to redefine normal?
After hearing this preacher ask this question, I decided something.
I will redefine normal.
I will take off my mask.
My question is:
Who will join me?
-A maskless teenage girl
