About Christianity

i bumped into my old classmate today, and because we had a little time at hand, we talked for a while. we talked about various things, and of course, about the past. and as we talked, the conversation steered to our personality.

he reminded me of the little personality test we used to play as a class activity during my pre-university days. he reminded me that i got the animal 'shark', which was supposed to mean i am a domineering person, someone who won't give way to others. actually, before the results were out, they already guessed which animal i would get.

to that i replied i was not domineering. and what he said was, 'you are. just that you try to hide it.' actually i know i am someone like that, and like he said, i tried to hide it. i had been trying to supress this trait for a very long time now. he said when you interact long enough with a person the characteristics of a person will show up.

do we always do that? i thought, yea we do. maybe not to people, but to God. we know we are sinful. and we know we cannot hide anything from God. but sometimes, naturally, as if it was not intentional, we still do that.

sometimes when we sin deliberately, we feel guilty. or maybe some of us don't, which mean you are in more trouble than the rest. and we sometimes do things to make up, as if that would help. maybe put in more effort in ministry, do more good deeds, do more quiet time...etc. as if by doing all these things we could cover up our sins, and hide our mistakes.

but in the end, we are only deceiving ourselves. a sin is a sin. we cannot hide it. and God knows everything. if we have a sin, we have to confess, pray for forgiveness and repent. it did not matter how many good deeds you did if you are still sinning deliberately. for all the good deeds and ministry work we did, our heart is still view-able to God.

then, why do we still try to hide it? maybe it is human tendency. maybe to hide it from ourselves. so we will forget the guilt and focus more on the satisfaction from all the 'holy' things we did. but is this even constructive? i thought not.

just like how i cannot hide my personality from my friend, we all cannot hide the state of our hearts from God. it is hard sometimes to face our sins. it is hard to talk about the embarrassing things we did. but, God already knew them all. so, why not you just confess? and come clean?

we are all humans. the mistake you made (which i hope is not too serious), would most likely be committed by another person before. for all we did, God still loves us. so, there will be no need to hide anything. and even if we want to hide, we cannot do so. because He knows everything. we cannot hide it.

so, let's stop trying various ways to hide our guilt, and face it openly.

this post is short. maybe i am too tired to think. or maybe lazy.

to hide the mask we are wearing, we put on another mask. how true it is. this is not my own idea, i found it as the lyrics to one of the songs in my playlist. i like the phrase, and think it is true, and so i also put it as my msn nick.

we wear masks everyday. why? haix i have the habit of asking questions and answering them on my own. in any case, we all know it is because we don't want others to know our real-self, our weakness and our ugliness. everyone of us has a side we don't want people to know, a weakness we don't want others to know.

we wear a mask and we go out. maybe to this person we show this mask, and to another we show another mask. maybe we are really feeling inferior on the inside, but on the appearance we put on the mask of 'superiority'. we act as if we don't feel inferior, so that we can cover up our true-self. maybe we do not intend to lie, but we sub-consiously, do that, without us knowing. and maybe to keep the sense of superiority intact, we act as if the things that affect us greatly do not even concern us. that will be the second mask. no, this is not all that is, the above example is only one out of many. me? i admit i do that too.

i have many masks too. not that i want it, it just happened. to some people i showed my cruel side, to some i showed my gentle side, to some i show my happy side, and to some i show my selfish side. maybe we change our masks according to who we deal with. maybe it is instinct we have to do that. i don't know. is it wrong? i have no idea. maybe it is just a different side of us, but it is still us. just like the blind men feeling for the elephant, some say it is big, some say it is small. but be it the head or the tail, it still is the elephant. so for us, can i say that be it this mask or that mask, it is still us? i don't know.

whether i am sad or not, i try to show my happy face to people. because i know letting them know my problems doesn't help, and it is not considerate to spoil people's mood for my own problems. i guess many of you are like this, in front of people you put on a smiling face. i don't know if it is real or not, but to me it is natural. maybe i do that too many times, maybe i am born like that. again, i have no idea. in front of people, i have no problem smiling, no need to even act, it is as if i am really happy and carefree. but again, when i am alone, many times i feel moody again. is it emo? no idea. but whatever the case, it do happen. what can we do? the only answer i can come up with is to pray to God.

but whatever the case, as christians we ought to show the genuine side of us which really cares for those around us, in order to touch the lives of others. if you put on a mask which is not you, then you can't do it, because fake feelings don't get across. love is blind, but that only applies to romantic love. maybe we have our ugly side, but it doesn't mean we cannot show our good side to others. the good side is still the real us. of course we are supposed to get rid of the ugly side, to confess our sins and repent from it. but still, everyone has weakness. can we say that because we have an ugly side, that's why we cannot be true to people? not really. we still can. so if you can, show the good and true side of yours to as many as possible. who knows? you might touch their lives, and in turn they may touch yours too.