Keeping Up Appearances (Part 1)

I recently started meeting with a few students on one of the University Campuses in Cape Town using my book as a Bible Study tool. We read a chapter and then use the questions at the end for discussion. The chapter we were discussing was “Cry out, Abba Father.” I suppose us talking about our relationship with God as Father sparked a comment by the young man in our group. He was noting that in prayer a lot of us Christians approach God from a distance. This approach often has us shutting our eyes and bowing our heads. Or it has us shouting, begging, or using fancy words like we were speaking from the King James Bible when talking to God. This is the way he had been taught, but now that he had observed another way to come before God, he questioned his approach.

I shared with him some of my thoughts about the possibilities of why we seem to approach God in certain ways. One of those possibilities is because we are “keeping up appearances.” We seem to want to be seen in a certain light by God and others (when praying in public). Now the thing is, we may impress others, but we can’t impress God. Maybe the reason we think we have to shut our eyes and bow our heads when praying is because we think this is what is required of us. Perhaps, some of our shouting, begging, and using fancy words are because we are hiding the fact that we really don’t know the One to whom we are speaking - we aren’t intimate with Him. I’m not equating intimacy with familiarity, and thus treating God without reverent fear and respect. Throughout my walk with God I’ve approached Him in all the forms mentioned above. I’ve later had to ask myself why I did that, and have come to realize that deep down I was often “keeping up appearances.” I thought I needed to be seen in a certain posture, or speak in a certain way for Him to receive my prayers. Or to appear as a proper Christian by those I was praying with. So many of us do this without even realizing it.

I was reading from Galatians 2 the other day and came across a situation that involved Paul and Peter that I hadn’t noticed before. To give us some background, in Acts 10, Peter is challenged by God to eat the food of the Gentiles, which was considered unclean by the Jews. God wanted the Gentiles to be reached with the good news and He was assigning Peter this task. Peter had a hard time wrapping his head around this one as he had been taught as a Jew not to eat animals that were considered unclean. Three times God spoke to him that what He had cleansed Peter must not call common. In some ways, God was offending Peter’s religious thinking in order to expose his heart. Peter finally relented and agreed to share the good news with the Gentiles, and the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Gentiles, much to Peter’s and his fellow Jews’ astonishment.

Then we read in Galatians 2 where Paul is confronting Peter over his hypocrisy. Peter had changed his ways and had been regularly eating with the Gentiles and ministering amongst them. However, when a conservative group of Jews came from Jerusalem to observe what was happening, Peter withdrew and separated himself from the Gentiles. Hypocrisy basically means, having a need for people to think more highly of us than we really are. Peter was “keeping up appearances” in front of this group of Jews, wanting to be seen or not seen, in a certain light. Other ministers of the gospel also followed suit. Fear was a motivating factor.

When we know the love of our heavenly Father for us and for others, we don’t need to fear what God thinks about us, or what people think. What Abba Father is desiring to nurture in us is honesty, openness, brokenness and quite simply, being real before Him and others.