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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Drop religious disguises and learn to love those God loves

Paul Graves

I grew up in a traditional, middle-class home where I learned how to get along with other people. Sometimes, getting along meant to curb my tongue, wear the “right” clothes, walk the straight and narrow, live out expectations others had for me. And I’ve been successful wearing those disguises. I loved my parents, so I wore the disguises.

But they didn’t, and still don’t, reflect all of the “me” that is deep inside. One of my disguises over the years has been to be what psychology calls “passive-aggressive.” That means I learned how to be sneaky in my rebellion against some of the norms I was brought up to honor. I’m still that way, but to a much lesser extent.

“Disguise” is from an 800-year-old French word that means “to change one’s appearance, one’s usual manner.” It’s our daily effort to hide who we think we are, what we look like, maybe what we think, maybe even from ourselves. Sometimes disguises can be playful and fun. They may successfully deceive others – and sometimes ourselves.

In a recent discussion, I found myself spontaneously commenting about disguises we all use within our religious traditions. Then a few days ago, I rediscovered a powerful phrase that – for me – rips away the need for religious disguises.

The phrase came from a famous German Lutheran pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonheoffer, during the last year of World War II. In April 1944, he was in a Nazi prison for fighting the Nazis. He had no need for disguise! He did need to be as faithful (trusting) of God as he could.

So in his letters from prison, he spoke of “religionless Christianity.” He knew his life expectancy was short. (He was hung by the Nazis in April 1945.) But his drive to be faithful to God overshadowed any religious pretenses. He was horrified at how people of fervent religious belief had allowed the war to happen. So he dared to ask:

“Are these religionless Christians? If religion is only a garment of Christianity – and even this garment has looked very different at different times – then what is Christianity?”

These should be bothersome questions to Christians (or persons of other faiths as they wrestle with their own traditions’ disguises). Get past your self-protective reactions to this phrase. Think deeply enough to consider when the ways you go about acting out your religion may actually show the very opposite of what your religious disguises intend.

Another German theologian of the 20th century, Bernard Haring, dared to call many of the patterns and practices of the church he saw as “behavioral atheism.” Wow! This is when we say we believe in God and disguise ourselves in religious postures and actions, but act like we – not God – are really in charge. We all do this.

My suspicion is we all tend to act that way, in one way or another, because there is a strongly conditioned part in each of us that believes we are no better than what our religious teachers and leaders have told us for centuries. We cannot trust God to be in charge when we can’t even trust God and Jesus to be telling the truth.

Our urge to control how others – and God – see us rises out of our own fearful disbelief in Jesus’ challenge to love others as ourselves. It cannot work when we cannot love ourselves well. If we can’t love ourselves, how can God? So we disguise ourselves.

Turn it upside down: If God can love us, why can’t we? It really is good news. But how can we experience it through our thick disguises?

The Rev. Paul Graves, a Sandpoint resident and retired United Methodist minister, is the founder of Elder Advocates. He can be contacted at welhouse@nctv.com.