I remember reading an interesting article a couple of years ago entitled “How to Fake a Clean House”.  It identified the things you could do with minimal effort to have the maximal appearance of a clean and organized house.  The article was divided by rooms—The Living Room, Kitchen, Bathroom, Home Office, Kid’s Room, and Laundry Room.  Presumably, if you’re having someone over then these rooms are most likely to be seen in order of priority.  The Master bedroom and bathroom can be shuttered behind closed doors.  After all, we have the privilege of setting boundaries, saying who sees what in our house. 

While there are times when such an approach is perhaps necessary, if we think of it as a metaphor for our lives, there’s something insincere about it—living in such a way that we appear all prim and proper, when in truth we’re hoping no one opens the closet door. 

The Bible offers multiple references to the deceptions of insincerity—appearing as one thing, all the while harboring an undisclosed mess.  Jesus called the Pharisees “whitewashed tombs”—all prettied up on the outside, but full of bleached bones and death on the inside.  He called them “eating bowls” that were washed on the outside, but the inside, where it mattered, they were filthy.  I’m wondering how he’d apply the idea of a fake clean house to our spiritual lives?

In what ways am I “faking a clean heart?”  This is an ageless human dilemma—how to be at peace and feel fulfilled, all the while hiding the stuff that prevents what I so deeply desire. The answer is that there is no way to fake a clean heart and have it full of what we most need and desire. And that’s the Good News of the Gospel—GRACE!  One manifestation of God’s grace is rolling up my sleeves and getting to the work of cleaning the debris and clutter, not as a burdensome command, but instead as a passion, an expression of gratitude, a demonstration of joy.  The dust-bunnies of my relationships, the stains of status-earning efforts, the ground-in-dirt of poor decision-making patterns, the corner-cutting of religious rituals, the closet piled full of the postponed projects of personal apologies, the clutter under the sofa of my soul, judgments of others that are a massively huge, but thin screen hiding my own shortcomings.  The grace we receive gives us what we need to begin dealing with these things openly and earnestly. 

Authenticity, sincerity, honesty, humility—these are just a few of the things that God offers to us in Salvation—eternal life, yes, but there are so many other aspects of salvation!  Paul wrote to the Galatians about the freedom we are given—freedom from certain ways of bondage and freedom for the life for which we are created.  Deep and complete honesty is an amazing liberation—but it can fill us with fear if it were not for the grace we receive in Christ.  We hide our faults—even from ourselves, even we are fooled by the fake clean house of our hearts!  Some, antithetically, push their faults out there—even embellish their faults, flaunt them—all for the same reason: fear.  Yet in Christ, God frees us through a penetrating and pure love—perfect love casts out fear, abolishes it, sends it packing with no return address.

So many people are quoted as saying something like “Grace takes us as we are, but doesn’t leave us as we’re found,” that I don’t know to whom credit is due.  Perhaps anyone who truly experiences grace has this revelation well up from within and that’s why so many are quoted as saying it.  It is more than true—grace takes us as we are and lifts us up and brushes us off and let us know that the mess of our lives is not enough to keep us from God’s love and redemption.  But through it, God also gives us the wherewithal to get to work—the desire to make our hearts and lives fit for a King. 

© Stephen Carl