LIE: Appearing to care and caring are the same thing

Lie:      Appearing to care and caring are the same thing.

Truth: Appearing to care is vanity – we must actually care.

This lie is self-evident, but necessary to confront because it easily flies under the radar. Not long ago, the Lord brought this to my attention in my own life. The general dynamic goes like this: as an elder in our church, I’m aware of many needs in our body, but I’m only one man and can’t get to everyone who has expressed a need. Some needs are more critical and chronic and need more attention, and even those I have trouble getting to at times. This situation is a setup to this lie. I often found myself thinking like this: ‘I haven’t seen so-and-so in a while . . . I probably should call . . . or  text . . . or visit. Maybe I’ll send him an email . . .’ These thoughts are fragmentary, subtle, never fully conscious or formed, but usually are experienced as a mixture of guilt, frustration and anxiety. Sound familiar?

This dynamic is exacerbated by today’s ‘connected’ world. We are much more aware of needs, with so many more ways to express concern: phone, text, email, Facebook and more. But many of these ‘connections’ are not true friendships or relationships at all — they are just that: connections: undefined, history-less and primarily virtual ties. I only mention this as a complication, but it is a significant one. The complication is simply that we find it increasingly difficult to distinguish the real relationship from the unreal.

Real relationships are to those to whom we are committed either through family or to whom God has joined us in His larger family. But as unreal relationships increase, the more they appear to be the norm; and consequently, the real relationships suffer. And although God can and does enlarge our capacity to love over time, we will always be constrained to a limited number of real relationships. Unreal relationships, on the other hand, diffuse and dissipate us; they fragment us until we are incapable of truly caring for any one individual. Caring is an understanding of and an expression to individuals, not of masses or groups. With that said, it’s easier now to delude ourselves into thinking that we must be caring (by posting Facebook comments, sending texts, etc) because we would feel guilty otherwise.

Self-forgetfulness, the ability to be unaware of ourselves, is the true attitude of our ‘alms’. Jesus said it: “But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. That your charitable deed may be in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.” Matthew 6:3–4

Giving alms in secret is loving in such a way that we are hardly aware of the performance of it ourselves; we simply do it, so focused on the person in need, that we fade into the background in our own minds.

How do we achieve this self-forgetfulness? It can only be gained indirectly – abandon all notions that life, our life, is a performance for the audience of men. Though they may think they are, men are not the judge of you — God is, who sees straight into your heart and bone and marrow and suffers with you. We have the awesome privilege of being the image-bearers of this great God. We can, through Jesus, become one with Him, letting his love flow through our eyes and ears, our hands and feet.

You pastors and leaders of God’s people, do not become ‘politicians’ who equivocate to please men, who imagine that any humility or brokenness or appearance of weakness will spoil your ‘well-earned’ platform. Such is a lie and a snare.

Even so Christ “made himself of no reputation, [took] the form of a bondservant and [came] in the likeness of men.” (Philippians 2:7) You could say that Jesus ‘forgot himself,’ or ‘forgot who he was,’ but in doing so accomplished the salvation of mankind.

The mark of any good literature is that we forget about the author. A good author or speaker or film maker will tell such a good story and draw the audience in so well that they hardly notice the writing or the spoken words or the quality of the film itself. The audience is too busy being vicariously mesmerized by the story. Likewise, people should notice us less and less and hear more and more the story our lives are weaving.

So forget about ‘appearing to care;’ forget what others may think or expect. Do not over-promise or give any false impressions of commitment. Simply do what God has called you to do, leaving the anxiety, the self-doubt and self-recriminations behind you. Jesus warned us of this trap:

But I say to you, do not swear at all: neither by heaven, for it is God’s throne; nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one. — Matthew 5:34–37

We naturally want to convince people of our sincerity and our commitment; we want people to believe us, to believe in us. But that trust is not earned so cheaply; it’s not earned by trying to appear earnest. It’s earned by doing what we simply promise to do: ‘our yes’ and ‘our no’; it’s earned by being faithful to what God calls us to do, and no more.

See the introduction, Lies attacking our relationships to others.