Faith and Values: Our masks create tunnel vision
Halloween is coming/ a sweet yet scary task,
But when the fright is o’er/please take off your mask!
The rhyme won’t win any prize for me, nor even grudging admiration for my poetic prowess. But feeble though it may be, it introduces what I’d like us to explore today: mask-wearing.
Wearing masks encourages us to indulge ourselves in tunnel vision.
Each of us wears a variety of masks, so we’re all susceptible to tunnel vision, a most un-Godly characteristic. Any kind of mask, literal or metaphorical, blocks our peripheral (sideline) vision, so that all we can see is what’s straight ahead.
There’s so much life happening off to the side, not to mention all around and inside us. Our masks hide that fuller life from us, and we’re much the poorer for it.
A brief visual example: If you have ever driven to Sandpoint from the south on Highway 95, you know what an incredible panoramic view awaits you as you come onto the Long Bridge on Lake Pend Oreille. A breathtaking 180-degree view embraces your eyes and spirit.
Directly ahead is Sandpoint. You can see Schweitzer Mountain above the city. To your right is Lake Pend Oreille with high mountains defining the shoreline in the distance. Above the Pend Oreille River to your left are more mountains, stair-stepped in various shades of green.
If you wore a mask on your Long Bridge journey, you would see only what is directly in front of you. Pretty, yes, but not breathtaking like it is when you take off the mask to drink in the whole visual experience.
I try to see life like that.
We can get along pretty well with our masks of self-protection firmly in place. We may see straight ahead and find life fairly good – or not so good. We can’t really see all that much looking through narrow viewfinders. We don’t see the people, opportunities or dangers off to the sides of our narrow lives.
Examples for what we miss when we keep our masklike blinders on are almost endless.
We miss a fuller measure of “truth,” for one thing. Busy protecting ourselves from embarrassment, we focus straight ahead and pretend all the world sees life as we do. And we miss so much, because we hide so much from ourselves and others.
Twelve years ago, my pastor courageously took off one mask. She spoke poignantly, and powerfully, about the domestic abuse she received at the hands of her first husband. She hoped her “unmasking” would encourage others to share their own stories of domestic violence with someone they could trust.
The masks we wear are, in the final analysis, destructive efforts to hide from ourselves, and even from God.
That is why it is important to remember what the writer of Psalm 139 affirms: “O God, you formed me, you know me inside-out, you are as close as my very breath. You know my every thought and every action, good and bad, but you love me still!”
Here is a man after God’s own heart, because he knows – at the deepest level – that God loves him better with his masks off. At least in God’s presence, this man can live mask-free and take in the wonders of life on the peripheral edges as well as in the very center.
Even before Halloween happens, let’s consider the different masks we wear. The Psalm writer removed his mask so he could see God more faithfully. He didn’t miss God in his peripheral vision. How about you?
The Rev. Paul Graves, of Sandpoint, is the founder of Elder Advocates. He can be reached at welhouse@nctv.com.