take off the masks...

I spoke at the methu FCA tonight... or attempted... I coughed through most of it. Hopefully someone heard something worthwhile. A little lengthy, but in case you missed it...

For some of you, this is our first meeting… others may only know me as the chick who takes your picture to put on the website or the one who screws up your stats. I am the Sports Information Director which basically means I manage the athletics portion of the website and maintain all of the sports' statistics. I was a student at Methodist from 2000 to 2003 so while most of the people had cycled through before I returned a year ago, a lot of things are still the same as they were when I was a student.

I've done some research and I think there are a few different reasons for coming here to FCA. Some of you grew up in church and can't stand it but at least the music is good at FCA and if your parents ask this is close enough to church that it will relieve your conscience. Some of you have real relationships with God and use FCA as a worship or fellowship time to grow in that relationship. Some of you saw a hot girl walk in and you just followed hoping you could get her number before the night is over… or maybe you're trying to get her name so you can look her up on facebook afterwards, but at the same time you're wondering what you got yourself into. And there are probably a few that have no interest in FCA, but it's better than sitting in your room all night every night.

When I was a senior in high school I struggled with the college decision. I tried to deny it, but my decision to come to Methodist basically came down to the fact I still wanted to play soccer. I arrived on campus and was thrown into preseason with a group of girls that everyone basically said, here are your friends for the next four years. I had never been a big partier in high school and everyone back home was anxiously awaiting stories of my rebellious nature coming out in drunken nights and run-ins with the police. I was determined to be "me" and yet still fit in. I latched on for dear life with the soccer team but wondered what I had gotten myself into. I had been involved in FCA during high school so the first Tuesday of the year, I convinced my roommate to check it out with me. I made it through that first semester using FCA as a substitute for church and telling myself that I was ok when in reality I felt a bit overwhelmed. I found my journal from my freshman year last night. Scary what a pack rat I am… but it was interesting to say the least. Almost seven years ago tonight, I wrote "It's a Sunday night in the midst of my freshman year of college and I am lost. Lost inside myself. I don't know who I am or what I am doing here. I cannot find a confidant. I cannot succeed in soccer or the classroom. I like it here, I love college, but where do I fit? I haven't been to church in almost three months. I feel so far away from God. I know that once I get back right with him, saying no, being different won't be so hard, but I just have to get to that point." The funny thing is when I re-read it now, I sound silly. I was living in the middle of people waiting for me to open up and share myself with them. I said I wasn't succeeding in soccer or the classroom but I was a starter and tied for the third leading scorer on the team and managed at least a 3.0 GPA that semester. I was obviously overwhelmed, but it wasn't because I didn't have opportunities to step outside of myself and find answers to my struggles.

After surviving my first semester, I decided over Christmas break I needed something else outside of soccer if I was going to last long enough to get a degree. During the second semester I became more involved on campus and branched outside of the soccer team. One Sunday night in early February I was hanging out with some girls in Weaver when I came across a roll of masking tape. I can't really explain my thought process, but the next thing I knew, I was taping my face… not my hair or anything… and I made sure to go around my eyes, nose and mouth, but I covered the rest of my skin. I walked around all night with it like that, acting like I didn't care but eating up any attention that people gave me. I claimed it helped me meet people.

I eventually became a RA, worked with the women's basketball team, served with SGA, led a bible study, and played club lacrosse. I felt like I was involved in everything, I knew everyone, I was constantly surrounded by people but I still felt lonely. My soccer team gave me a hard time for hanging out with those goody goodies from FCA and the FCA crowd thought I was being corrupted by the basketball team. One of my friends called me out and said I was a different person around different groups. I was about to graduate from college and I was still struggling with who I was. In the cave, there is a storage closet I used to raid every Tuesday night my senior year. I would combine the worst possible items to create the ultimate costume. One Tuesday I found an orange ski mask, a yellow rain coat, a plaid tie and stuck a rubber foot coming out of my jacket. I walked the halls of Weaver attempting to encourage people to come to FCA while I got funny looks but inside loving the attention I received. I claimed it was a way to convince people FCA was more fun than a regular church service.

Growing up, I always thought college was where you matured, figured out who you were and met your husband… maybe you learned a thing or two in between. I'm not sure I did any of those things and walked across the stage with my degree still naïve to the realities of life outside the safety net of college.

What's the point of my walk down memory lane? When I look back on it now I can see all the masks I wore as a college student… literally and figuratively. I'm not sure if anyone really knew me. Sometimes I tried so hard to act like I didn't care what people thought that I was even faking that I didn't care. I don't know all of you but I feel like there is such a natural inclination to put on masks and hide from reality or keep a protective barrier between us and reality. We surround ourselves with people, but they don't really know who we are. Some of you are walking around this campus faking it. We pass on the way to class and I ask you how you're doing and you say fine when really you just bombed a test or just had a fight with your boyfriend. Sometimes we spend our nights in alcohol because we feel more comfortable but alcohol can just become another mask that lets us be someone else or lets us forget who we are. We have athlete masks, party masks, Christian masks, class clown masks, slutty masks, etc. depending on who we want to be that day around which people. I think sometimes we subconsciously stop before we enter a building to check our mask. You don't have to answer, but how many of us threw on the FCA mask before walking in tonight? Some of us walk around claiming to be Christians but we're doing more acting than we are being. We spend a lot of time doing the right things… we go to church, we do community service, we put Jesus fish on the backs of our cars, we might even read our Bibles or tell our friends about God… all things that are fine and good. But God didn't ask you to do things to make you look like Christ. He has asked us to get to know Him and through our relationship with God we can be a Christian without having to worry about acting like one. In theory, we wouldn't need a churchy Jesus mask to be a Christian. If that's who we are, it is a part of who we are without a mask.

College is an opportunity to figure out who we are, but too often we pick and choose masks and just interchange them to fit our audience without ever getting to know ourselves let alone, let someone else get to know us. When I was a student, one of my favorite things each week was turning the lights off at FCA while we sang. I craved FCA each week because when the lights went off in the cave and the stars lit up, I felt the distractions disappear and felt a connection to God I couldn't find anywhere else in my life. It felt real when everything else felt fake.

So if we can admit we wear masks… why do we do it? There has to be something motivating us to hide.

- Fear of openness – In John 11:17-37, Jesus just found out his friend Lazarus died and comes to meet his sisters Mary and Martha. In verses 33-36 it says, "When Jesus saw Mary weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 'Where have you laid him?' he asked. 'Come and see, Lord,' they replied. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, 'See how he loved him!'" To cry in front of people takes courage in and of itself. Jesus was the teacher, a supposed healer and yet he shows true compassion and openness when he weeps for his friend's passing. Sometimes we are afraid to be open and let someone in.

- Fear of rejection – Job was a guy who had his life rocked. He lost all of his possessions, his children died, he was covered with sores, his wife doubted his faith and his friends were hanging him out to dry. In Job 19:19-20, Job says, "All my intimate friends detest me; those I love have turned against me. I am nothing but skin and bones; I have escaped with only the skin of my teeth." Sometimes we feel like Job. Everything bad piles on and we turn around and everyone has left us to fend for ourselves and we become vulnerable. Webster defines vulnerable as open to attack. Sometimes we wear masks because we don't want to leave ourselves open to attack. Or maybe you've been burned before and have built up a wall to prevent it from happening again. When we fear rejection we say things like: "If you really knew me – you may not like me – you may reject me. Since I am afraid of rejection, I can't really get close to you or let you get close to me." and "If I am honest and share my intimate thoughts and ideas and you reject me it will crush me so I can't really get close to you or let you get close to me." Have you been burned before? A lot of times we do put on masks in relationships after we've been burned. If you've been cheated on, how likely is it that you'll dive right into too another relationship ready to share everything about yourself with someone new. We're cautious… sometimes insecure or even suspicious of every new relationship because we just know they're going to cheat too.

So we admit it... we wear the masks and we might even be able to take a look and figure out why we wear the masks, but how do we fix it? I think we have to be transparent.

What does it mean to be transparent? We have to take off the masks. I can't make you believe anything I say, but I have to preface my solution with my beliefs. I believe God made us… so the first step to removing the mask is to figure out who you are in Christ. Let's say you just bought a new iPod from the apple store and you can't get it to work. Are you going to call the Honda car dealership and ask them to fix it? What about McDonald's? Would they be able to help you? They might have a suggestion based on their own experience with an ipod, but your best answer is going to come from the one who made it. You're instinct is going to take you back to the apple store first. I can ask any of you how to take my masks off, and you may have some good advice about how you did it, but the best answer for me is going to come from God who created me to glorify Him.

Sometimes we've piled the masks on top of each other in an attempt to try out different masks making it a little more difficult. Remember my tape face I told you about earlier… Have you ever put tape on your face? Let's just say there's a reason athletic trainers use pre-wrap before they tape your ankle. Sometimes peeling off layers hurts. We don't always want to see what's underneath, but dig deep to figure out who you are outside of the external influences like school, friends, family, etc. We have to be transparent with ourselves before we can be transparent with others. In Paul's first letter to Timothy, he told him, "For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline." You're stronger than you think and need to step outside of the fear, though sometimes it's obviously much easier said than done. Ask yourself, Am I being real? What do I want out of life? Am I being who God has called me to be?

Once you've removed the mask, you need to seek out someone(s) who you can trust to hold you accountable. Beyond honesty with yourself, God created us to be relational people. I feel like Methodist is full of a lot of surface friendships. Thanks to sites like facebook and myspace we have tons of "friends" and sometimes we even have daily "conversations" with people online, but when was the last time you sat and really talked to someone about who you are. It's scary to let someone in, but it's an authentic experience. We already know we don't want to be lonely and through Jesus' example, I believe God has called us to be real, and transparent with each other. I don't think we are expected to spill our guts to everyone we meet on the street and I don't believe transparency is an excuse to be so brutally honest that we hurt someone else. I do believe we could benefit from creating real relationships that honor who God has called us to be.

Rebecca St. James is a Christian singer from Australia with a long list of credentials. I've never been a huge fan of her music, but she was interviewed about her newest album and she talked about transparency. She said…

"For a long time, I thought, 'Becca, you've got to just buck up and be strong, you've got to put on a brave face. You've just got to get through this burnout or this discouraging time or this pressure of leadership as a woman in music. You've just got to grit your teeth and get through it.' But God has just so impressed on my heart the truth that vulnerability is powerful. When you take off the mask, you relate at a base level to everyone else who has been through pain. That [transparency] promotes intimacy; it promotes togetherness, relying on God. It promotes a lack of pretense and a true honesty that is just so beautiful… We are so over-independent and, so willing to put on the strong, brave face that everything's okay when it's not."

I challenge us all to take off the masks… myself included. Hold me accountable. Dig deeper with your roommates, your friends, your teammates and your classmates. Get to know yourself and share yourself with others in a real and transparent way.