What is your disguise?

     The superhero's of yesterday (and some today) continue to amaze and mystify me.  Superman's only real disguise from his "true identity" is a pair of glasses and some snazzy pajamas.  Batman has a bit more disguise but everything about his is Bruce Wayne.  It was the same with the super bad people as well.  Sometimes the only way to tell the good from the bad was they symbolic white hat versus black hat.  Of course the dead guy was always the bad guy.  What is the purpose of a disguise anyway?  Couldn't Batman or Superman do the same things as just mere humans?  Maybe we were duped into believing that only "super" people were capable of doing good.  That gives us an excuse to be bad.  Let the superhero's take care of all the chaos we have created.  One of my favorite superhero's is Underdog!  He and Superman transforming in telephone booths and other private places is remarkable when you consider we all knew they were still just the dog and man. 
     I don't believe that it is an exaggeration to say that we all have disguises that we put on from time to time.  We usually do this for selfishness though and not for the good of humanity or to save the world!  People put on their persona when they get up and then take it off when they get home from work.  Some do the transformation while they are in the secrecy of their car in the middle of traffic moving at 10 mph!  Got to keep our secrets!  Truth be told we don't want to have anyone know about the person we are disguising.  What do you and I look like striped of our disguise?  As I look back over my past (16 vocations) I can see how I put on each of the vocations I was involved in.  People didn't see Steve; they say whatever I was doing.  How about you?  Do you catch yourself putting on a disguise so that you can have a secret life?  Maybe you are like so many who wink at the act knowing the person is something other than their disguise belies.
     Here we come to the painful part.  We know who we are.  The disguise is a temporary element in our lives designed to help us deal with the world we live in.  People don't want to see the negative in their lives.  Unless they are a psychopath or sociopath.  I'm not suggesting that you need to be either in order to justify the picture of who we really are.  When I was a small boy of 10 or so I fantasized about being a spy.  I wanted to save the world from evil.  I made a mask and everything.  No cape.  It was my private world where I could go and do good and be recognized for doing good.  In the real world of my life it wasn't the case.  In real life the worse they made me out to be the worse I became.  With a "monster" living in the community there was little reason for people to look at what they thought and did as bad because they weren't as bad as me.  My "badness" was a disguise so that NO ONE would see the hurt, scared and even terrified little boy named Steven.  Most people still don't want to hear that for fear that they would have to face the truth about their own stories. 
     It really comes down to how much we trust God to love, accept and approve of us.  If we accept the love, acceptance and approval of God for us, then we lose the need for a disguise.  There are people who hide behind anything in order to not face the truth in their lives.  The truth doesn't kill us.  The secrets kill us.  They kill us from the inside out.  The secrets take us to where we see ourselves as an empty shell with little left to offer.  That's not what God wants.  He wants us to be free of our self.  So, he developed this plan that would allow us to abandon our persona of old and put on a new persona of a forgiven, loved, accepted and approved man or woman of God.  There are many alleged Christians who put on the Christian disguise and know nothing of the renewing of the body, mind and spirit by God.  We can only pass on what we have.  If we have Christ we can pass Him on.  If we have self then that is all we can pass on.  Who do I want to be like me?  The old me?  No one. 
     Sanctification is the process of letting go of self to live for God in all areas of our lives.  There is no disguise.  Belonging to God and being reborn by God leads us to a life where we feel fulfilled and of value to God and others.  If you have disguise(s) that you are hiding behind, get rid of them.  It's better to be know for who you really are than to leave people guessing who you are.  Still, I struggle day by day to abandon my disguises.  Some days are better than others.  I'm sure that's true for you too.  Still go forward and become more like Jesus.  He's not a disguise!