The Masks We Wear

It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything. ~ Tyler Durden
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From a recent Salt Lake Tribune:

The public doesn’t get it. My party lacks ideas. Activists are too shrill.

Those are not things you normally hear from a politician.

But in the past few months, they’ve all come from the mouth of three-term Sen. Bob Bennett, who in losing his re-election bid in May seemingly won a consolation prize: freedom of speech.

“The Republican Party is short on ideas,” Bennett, a Republican, told NBC News recently. “They’re very long on slogans right now, but they’re short on ideas.”

Now that Bob Bennett has nothing to lose, he is free to speak; to tell us how he really feels, how he really thinks. What if he said these things while in office?

They would have crucified him.

There is a lot of talk these days about truth and integrity. We claim to want it; but do we really?

Politics is full of it... the double-speak... it is a given that we have all accepted. It is known that what a politician says during the campaign is not what he or she will do when in office.

If you travel in church circles, you will meet people who are trained in double-speak. They are thinking and living one thing, but feel obligated to state another. Behind closed doors, their marriage may be a wreck... but to the public, they present a good front - it is expected if you want good standing in the church. They will say and sing words they do not believe, or are at least dubious about, but will keep these musings to themselves lest they be dis-fellowshipped or marginalized.

Beyond that, they may be so well trained in double-speak, they are not aware that they do it. They utter inconsistencies within the same breath without blinking. Contrary statements do not disturb them.

I was having a conversation with a Christian woman once. She was telling me about her fear of secularism, her fear of disease, her fear of poverty, etc. Everything she mentioned was something that gave her dread.

"Wow," I said. "That is a lot of fear to live under."

She looked at me with an offended and perturbed eye. "I am not fearful!" she replied in an icy tone. "Fear is from the Evil One, and I do not allow fear to have a foothold in my life."

Double speak.

I remember being challenged over a decade ago at the Cornerstone music festival. Glenn Kaizer was preaching about double-mindedness. He defined it as having multiple "selves"; that who you are and what you say depends on who you are with. He said that he was feeling more at peace as he brought his multiple "selves" into one "self"; even if that meant he seemed less ideal to some.

In the past few years, I have started giving voice to questions that have haunted me. I have let go of things that no longer make sense. I am attempting to dig out various facades that I erected over time.

This has made me less ideal to some... but it is giving me more peace.