There is a sickness that wears Sunday clothes and sings in perfect pitch. It bows at the altar and quotes scripture fluently—but it does not love. It does not see. It does not weep with the broken. It fears the stain of sorrow and avoids the smell of real suffering. This sickness is not new, but it is growing. It is the religion of appearances.
I have seen it in the bright white smiles of men who would rather preach than apologize. In women who offer Bible verses to silence pain rather than sit with it. In leaders who speak of grace from pulpits yet show none to their own household. I have seen it in myself—when I chose performance over presence, image over integrity.
We build churches like stages. We script our testimonies like monologues. We dress our wounds with holy language so no one sees them bleeding. We call it faith, but it is fear in disguise—fear of being truly known, truly touched, truly changed.
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| The Religion of Appearances |
I remember a funeral I once attended in a small village. The widow stood outside her home, barefoot, eyes red, hands trembling. The elders came—not to comfort, but to critique. Her tears were too loud, her grief too raw, her clothes not “appropriate for mourning.” They wrapped their judgment in sacred tradition, but it was nothing more than cowardice. Real love would have sat beside her in the dirt. Real faith would have wept too.
But the religion of appearances cannot handle real grief. It prefers the clean, the scripted, the controlled. It scolds the spontaneous and condemns the chaotic. And in doing so, it misses the God who came not in robes, but in rags. The God who touched the leper. Who wept at the tomb. Who dined with the scandalized. Who called the pious whitewashed tombs.
When did we become so afraid of being human?
What good is a polished prayer if it comes from a heart too proud to kneel beside the poor? What good is a sermon if it has never walked through the silence of a grieving home, or held a father who lost everything? If your religion cannot survive in the slums, at the graveside, or among the outcast, then it is not rooted in heaven. It is born of ego.
And so I ask myself—what kind of faith am I living? One that hides behind tradition? Or one that dares to be touched by the world’s pain?
I want the kind that shows up barefoot to a funeral. That listens more than it speaks. That holds the trembling hand of the rejected. That says, “I don’t have answers, but I have time. I have presence. I have love.”
I want a faith that is not afraid of mess. A soul that does not seek to look holy, but to be whole.
Because God is not found in appearances. He is found in the unseen gestures of mercy. In the trembling voice of confession. In the quiet strength of those who love when no one is watching.
Let them keep their perfection. I choose the sacred mess.
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