Incorruptible

Recently the Lord pulled a major download on me, one of those big ones you write home about. Or in this case blog about. Same idea. Different audience. Sometimes. Anyway, it went something like this:

I have always been a mimic. It takes approximately .03 seconds for an accent I'm hearing to start coming out of my mouth. When I'm around people I unconsciously graft their mannerisms, their gestures, their phrases, their tastes, their senses of humor into my own. I don't always notice because the people I am most often with hold my same basic standards and I don't usually have to worry about mimicking the wrong things.

There is an exception to every “usually.” A few days ago a friend pulled me aside and asked if I realized I had in fact begun to mimic the wrong things. I did realize, which made it worse, but she followed up her admonition with a piece of wisdom so keen that it took away the sting and stuck with me. She believed mimicry was actually a good thing, that it was for something; only the object of my mimicry was misplaced— it should have been Jesus.

I confess these to have been new thoughts for me. And with them came a creeping understanding that there was more to my mimicry than reflex. Phase two of the download began. Let me set this up.

It is very, very easy for me to be embarrassed by my innocence. I am not “experienced” (whatever that nebulous term means), nor am I overly acquainted with evil. But it is a serious temptation to pretend to be less righteous than I am when confronted with unsanctified charisma and charm. Holiness pales in comparison to the coolness and power and seduction of the less-than-holy, and I just want to be liked and accepted and enjoyed by the cool and powerful. Goody-goody is so.... goody-goody!

What I forget is this: C.S. Lewis said that heaven is ever-expanding and hell is ever-imploding. All of hell, he says, could fit into the smallest crack on the smallest sidewalk of those Golden Streets; righteousness constantly feeds itself, creating an upward spiral. Evil eats itself— downward spiral. By that logic, goodness must be infinitely more cool, more powerful, more seductive, more more than its opposite. If only we would stand in the full strength of that! There is nothing so insipid as diluted righteousness. People stay away in droves when we are inconsistent. The Lord challenged me to glory in righteousness. To revel! Wallow! Breath it in and out! True evil will hate me, but maybe those on the fence will find the coolness and power and seduction of light and truth and reality to be irresistible. Perhaps win some by being winsome. He dared me to be incorruptible. And watch what kind of attractiveness He creates out of it.

So the phases dovetail here: only when I mimic Him can I walk in His righteousness. And to mimic Him I must spend time with Him so that I begin to pick up His mannerisms, His gestures, His phrases, His tastes, His senses of humor. Paul says something about that, doesn't he? “Then become imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, even as Christ also loved us and gave Himself for us... But let not fornication, and all uncleanness, or greediness, be named among you, as is fitting for saints; also baseness, and foolish talking, or joking (the things not becoming), but rather thanksgiving... Then do not become partakers with them; for you then were darkness, but are now light in the Lord; walk as children of light. For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth, proving what is pleasing to the Lord.” (excerpts from Eph 5:1-10)