I just feel so...VULNERABLE

When I was young, and had even more questionable taste in movies than I do now, I was a big fan of Eddie Murphy in the two Nutty Professor movies that he made.  The family dinners from the first movie are still pretty much classic, but (justifiably) the second movie has pretty much dropped off of everyone's radar screen.  One scene, however, still sticks in my mind: Buddy Love, the evil and skinny alter ego character, is nosing around Sherman Klump's family's house, but gets caught by the grandma, who thinks he's a male stripper on his way over for a bachelorette party.  The take away moment - Grandma slipping out of all of her clothes to put on a bit of a show for the stripper, talking about how she feels so "vulnerable" standing naked in the garage.


It seems to me that trying to live a life of faithfulness to God and love for God and others is a lot like stripping down to nothing and standing, naked, in the garage.  Vulnerability is this central piece in the whole puzzle; if we're going to trust, if we're going to love, then all the layers of concealment we put up to mask all that we are have to start coming off.  Frankly, that scares the daylights out of me, and most people - there's a reason why Adam and Eve were ashamed of their nakedness.  Contrary to the lurid little fantasies we like to indulge in, nobody actually looks perfect with their clothes off...we've all got scars, pimples in improbable locations, stretch marks, bruises, unseemly hair, and all kinds of other things that you don't see at 2 AM on Skinemax thanks to lots of airbrushing and strategically applied makeup.  Nakedness, ultimate vulnerability, shows us just as we are...and we don't necessarily like what we see in the mirror.


And yet, there's no point in the pretense, at least on the God side of things.  To steal a quote from The Crucible...when God's involved, "we burn a hot fire here that melts away all concealment."  Our shows, no matter how good the acting, don't play in Peoria when God's the audience.  It might be a little easier to get away with it in real life, to make ourselves up as our preferred character of the week, but...who really wins that game?  Real love, real faith - they hinge upon a willingness to stand as naked as the day we were born in our own proverbial garage.


Of course, easier said than done.  I think that's where the promise of 1 Cor. 2:16, that "we have the mind of Christ," comes into play.  We find in Christ the ultimate vulnerability, the willingness to be silent as a sheep before the slaughter...and we find in us the Holy Spirit at work, helping us let go of ourselves and make room for relationship by taking off the fakeness that stands in the way.