Keeping It Real

Every Monday we’ll post something about maintaining your sexual integrity. Hope it helps.

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Keeping it Real

Believe it or not, this tow-headed 17 year old is me playing Oscar Madison in a 1971 production of The Odd Couple at Wilson High School of Long Beach, California. In addition to sloppy Oscar, my three years with the Wilson Theater Department afforded me a chance to play a psychiatrist (David and Lisa), a rapist (Dark of the Moon), a Civil War army captain (The Miracle Worker) and a depressed narcissist (The American Dream). I was never brash enough to consider a career at it, but the discipline of learning a script and keeping focus onstage was terrific training, and great fun. And despite the amateur simplicity of a school production, there really was something exhilarating about trying to inhabit another character, and another’s life, if only for a few hours. To act is to present yourself as someone you’re not, in the hope your audience will thoroughly believe you.

That works onstage, but as the ad says, Do Not Try This at Home. The people who know and trust me are hardly an audience, so they should get the unvarnished, unrehearsed version. That means my yea should be yea, my answer to How you doing? should be accurate, my beliefs and actions will be harmonious and, when they’re not, I’ll admit it. I should keep it real, and interestingly enough, while keeping it real, I find it that much easier to keep it clean as well. Authenticity and holiness go together nicely; one can hardly put on a false face in a godly way.

Three scriptures come to mind when I consider this:

“Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds.” (Colossians 3:9)
“For ye were sometimes darkness, but now [are ye] light in the Lord: walk as children of light.” (Ephesians 5:8)
“Confess your faults one to another.” (James 5:16)

If I take these to heart, I’ll make transparency a goal today. Naturally, discretion is still on the menu, since not everyone who asks how I am really wants anything more than the Reader’s Digest version, and some things – many of them, actually – shouldn’t be casually shared. Still, I’ll make sure I don’t present myself as being more than what I am. No roles, no spiritual pretense or professional veneer, just an honest presentation of the man who really is as plain as the name Joe implies. I’ll be especially careful not to hold back when a truthful answer is called for, and to let my wife and close friends know how I really feel, be it good, bad or awful. If (ha!) no I meant when I sin, I’ll confess it to God and, as needed, someone else as well, and I’ll make that sort of honesty a natural part of my regular conversation. That, to my thinking, is what walking in the light is largely about, and when taking that walk I find a peaceful, separated mindset comes pretty easily.

Acting can be fun and, for a very select few, even a profitable way of making a living. But for most of us, it’s about being, not acting, and in being true to Him and the new nature He’s given us in Christ, today we can offer ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable, warts and all. Amazing what He can do with such unrehearsed, unpolished, yet authentic vessels.