Do you remember that movie, The Mask, where Jim Carey plays this somewhat unpretentious bank clerk named Stanley Ipkiss?  He is the classic ‘loser’, unwilling to stand up to those who use him, afraid to speak to the girl, and desperately wishing he were someone else.  But then he finds this mask, and with it he is transformed into everything he dreams of being.  It is one of the funniest movies that I have ever seen. It is also one of the saddest.

I have this advertisement for an antidepressant on my desk.  It has paintings of masks that people suffering from depression have drawn to try to explain their inner feelings.  The pictures are heartbreaking.  They reveal brokenness, abuse, confusion, and fear. Like Stanley Ipkiss, they too have worn masks to try to escape the world around them.

And we all do that, don’t we. Ever since that first sin, when man wove together his fig leaf to cover his nakedness, we have all learned to cover ourselves with something that we are not.

John Eldredge points out that God asks Adam a revealing question.  God asks, ‘Who told you that you were naked?’ (Gen 3:11).  It is a question that he is asking us as well.  ‘Who told you that you were ugly … a failure … unacceptable … stupid … a coward … a whore … ?  You can fill in the blank.

Let me ask this, who has the most to gain by you hearing that?  If it is true, that God has created me for a purpose (and if that is not true than as Paul says, we are to be pitied more than all men), then I have to ask who has the most to gain by destroying my image of that purpose.

You see, the saddest part of The Mask, is not that Stanley needs to wear it to escape reality.  No, the saddest part it is that he believes the lies that he is interpreting as reality.  Paul instructs us in Ephesians as we dress for battle, to first put on the belt of truth precisely because we live in a world of lies.  Satan is called the father of lies. 

Who told you that you were naked?


To the King,

David