The Realm of Death Pt 4

Performance

  

            We not only need a strategy for concealing our emptiness, we need a strategy for filling it. As judge, we perpetually try to get life from other judges—the very ones from whom we are hiding our emptiness. Our strategy for getting worth is performance—to display to others what we ourselves judge as “good” while we hide what we assume others will judge as “evil” in us. So we try to conceal our nakedness—who we really are—under a covering that hides all that we think is liable to judgment and that displays all that we think is viable as a source of approval.

           What particular covering we use, and thus what aspects of our self we hide, depends entirely on which false gods we seek to get life from as well as the particular strategy we adopt for getting this life. If, for example, the god to which we ascribe worth and from which we derive worth is a religious god, then we must display religious attitudes and behaviors and suppress everything about us that is not religious. If, on the other hand, the god to which we ascribe worth and from which we attempt to derive worth is a secular god of success (for example), then we must display success, and everything that might appear unsuccessful in our lives must be concealed.

            Something similar could be said of every conceivable god from which we might seek life, whether it be possessions, sexuality, ethics, reputation, pleasure, or security. Living out of our knowledge of good and evil, we display and strive to acquire all we judge as good. And we suppress and strive to avoid all that we judge to be evil. We perform and we hide.

            Living by performing and hiding, which is to say, relating to God, ourselves, and others through the filter of our knowledge of good and evil, is not life. The serpent lied. As God warned us, living in a perpetual attempt to get life is death. And it is our very attempt to get life on our own that prevents us from living, for it prevents us from receiving and giving God’s unconditional love, which is life itself. We simply cannot receive or give unconditional and unsurpassable love when we are performing before and hiding from the One from whom we are supposed to freely receive love as well as those to whom we are supposed to freely give love.