What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience (2 Cor. 5:11b)
I am a hypocrite. Having a reputation as a holy man, I often live in a way that is anything but holy. It is easy for us to portray who we believe others desire to see – that image we long to see in the morning mirror. This craft is only made sharper by social media. Now we are free to craft a perfect photo-shopped life by leaving out all the blemishes and truths that get in the way of people loving us. There is a reason why studies have proven a correlation between Instagram and that sinking feeling in your chest of not measuring up to those around you.
In ministry, it is especially easy to “fake it”. After awhile, you become an expert at wrapping your words with comfortable but empty phrases. It is easy to get drunk on Saturday and pastor on Sunday. It is easy to condemn in others what is so glaring in our own souls. We are our own favorite sinner. Yet, if grace is for anyone, it must be for the promiscuous saint and the drunken pastor. Even the best among us are still deeply flawed sinners laying waste to a mercy supreme.
Forgive me. I will disappoint you.
I will hurt you and continue to attempt to hide my own sins out of a fear of rejection. Believe not the lie that we are different. For I am just as you. Crafted out of flesh and bone and set free into the absurdity and the absence. Today, maybe for a split moment I can bare my soul to you. Perhaps, present a fleeting glance into all the broken fragments that make me so incredibly human. We are all saints by permission and sinners by practice. Of the latter, I am the most high.
Father of mercy, forgive me, a sinner
Matt simon blog 