Your Roots Are Showing!

 The other day, my youngest daughter, Laura, looked at my hair and said, “Mommy…are you trying out a new color? Your hair is lighter on the bottom than it is on the top.” That was all the confirmation I needed to know that it was past time to pick up a box of blonde and recolor my hair. Coloring my hair is usually pretty low on my list of priorities and I just get to it when I can…by which time there is usually some root re-growth. Truth is, I know that people probably realize that my hair is dyed. I’m not trying to fool anyone. In fact, I often joke about my Ms. Clairol blonde in a box hair. I think I’d look pretty foolish if I tried to pretend that it was the real-deal.

It makes me think of the tendency that so many of us have to put on a perfect looking front when we are around other Christians. Instead of coming to church ready to admit that we are broken people in need of a savior, we instead put on our phony, perfect looking masks and our semi-permanent smiles, refusing to admit that there is anything wrong with us, our family or our lives. The problem is, no one has it all together. Eventually, the truth of our brokenness, “our roots” so to speak, will start to show. Unfortunately, if we have tried to convince everyone that we are perfect, and then they see that we are, in fact, not, we are then percieved as hypocrites.

In the New Testament of the Bible, the literal translation of the word “hypocrite” refers to someone who is acting or pretending to be someone else. So, when we pretend that we are perfect, flawless and sinless, we are being hypocrites. God honors and is honored by sincerity, not hypocrisy.

Finally, if you are still struggling with allowing your true, flawed self be seen, listen to these verses from 1 John 1:8-10, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.”