TrueFaced

Book Review
Book by Bill Thrall, Bruce McNichol, and John Lynch

As the title of the book suggests, this is a book about authenticity and the things that keep us from it. We wear many different masks, not only to make ourselves look good, but often motivated by a sincere desire to make God look good. Most of us fall into one of three basic categories:

1. Those of us who pretend we are "doing just fine."
2. Those of us who are constantly searching for new techniques to help us "get better."
3. Those of us who wear "pedigreed masks," "the 'together' folk, the postcard family: well-educated, well-heeled, well-groomed, well-assured . . . and, well, a lot of work for the rest of us."

How did we become mask-wearers? The authors suggest that it goes back to sin--either sins committed by us or sins committed against us. If the sin is ours, the response is guilt. If the sin is against us, the response is hurt. These responses lead to inevitable effects. The inevitable effects of guilt and hurt are shame, blame, fear, denial, and anger.

The authors list six common behaviors when the inevitable effects of guilt and/or hurt join forces inside us:

1. We become highly sensitized to our own sin and we judge the sin of others. "Unresolved sin is always buried alive."
2. We lose our objectivity in a crisis and we become the issue. "One of the greatest gifts a parent, teacher, mentor or spouse can give to others is objectivity about who they are."
3. We hide our sinful behavior and become vulnerable to more sin. The more influence we have, the more we are tempted to hide our true selves for fear that we will lose that influence.
4. We are unable to love or to be loved. "Without the power of grace to deal with sin, we will ruin the spirits and violate the souls of those we claim to love and are responsible to love."
5. We become susceptible to wrong life choices. "The jealousy, bitterness, self-doubt and confusion that result from unresolved hurt or guilt cause many to pursue something that isn't them at the loss of what is them."
6. We attempt to control others. "Controllers have an incredible need to elevate what they believe at the expense of anything else. They often tell their employees or constituencies that other groups do not measure up, or that such groups are suspect and fall short of 'real truth.' They create a performance-driven environment through their endless demands on how people should live, behave and conform."

The authors conclude: "A major cause of burnout in America is not overwork, over-scheduling or over-activity. It is bitterness."

Probably the key chapter of the book is a comparison of two fundamental motivations: pleasing God versus trusting God. The authors use the metaphor of two paths, each one culminating in a room. The path of pleasing God leads to the room of good intentions, where our value will be striving to be all that God wants us to be and our action will be to work on our sin to achieve an intimate relationship with God. The other path of trusting God leads to the room of grace, where our value will be to live out of who God says we are and our action will be standing beside God with our sin in front of us, working on it together. The knob on the door of the room of grace is humility, whereas the knob on the door of the room of good intentions is effort.

Actually, the path of trusting God is the only way to please God, because the Bible says, "Without faith, it is impossible to please Him, for he that cometh to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." (Hebrews 11:6) The authors conclude: "Pleasing God is an incredibly good longing. It always will be. It just can't be our primary motivation, or it will imprison our hearts."

The authors describe "The Great Disconnect," i.e. saying the right thing, but living the wrong life. Some symptoms of living in the room of good intentions include:

• Valuing together-looking, sanitized appearances
• Valuing neatly-packaged ("sharp") people and an intolerance for imperfection.
• Acting to control my children in public so that they will make me look mature and put together.
• Acting out a pristine life of Christian refinement, while camouflaging my unresolved sin under the guise of these same behaviors.

"In the room of good intentions, we strive to change into something we are not yet: godly. In the room of grace, we grow up and mature into something that is already true about us: (we are) godly. God is not interested in changing the Christian. He already has . . . God wants us to believe that He has already changed us so that He can get on with the process of maturing us . . . Trust opens up the way for that process."

Another key chapter is entitled "Grace Works!" I take this to be a play on words, because grace not only leads to doing good works (Ephesians 2:8-10), it also works in that it effectively resolves our sin issues. The five ways in which grace works include:

1. Humility attracts grace because it requires trust. (I Peter 5:5; James 4:6)
2. Grace changes our life focus from struggling with sin issues to trusting who God says I am. If we focus on struggling with sin issues, we will never experience trusting who God says I am. If we focus on the trusting who God says I am, we will experience unparalleled transformation regarding our sin issues.
3. Grace lets God handle sin. Moral striving to become godly only keeps us enslaved to sin. Shifting to trusting God helps us take ourselves less seriously while taking our sin far more seriously.
4. Grace melts masks and creates authenticity.
5. Grace changes how we treat each other when we sin. It reorients all our relationships. Our fundamental identity is one of saints who sin rather than sinners who are saved by grace. Of course, we are sinners saved by grace, but the authors' point is that our new identity is that we are saints who still sin rather than sinners who occasionally do something good.

God's final objective for us is not resolving sin or "getting well." God's ultimate goal is maturing us into who He says we are and releasing us into the dreams He designed for us before the world began. He carefully designed His "influence system" so that we would have to influence far more out of who we are than what we do.

Three chapters are devoted to describing three gifts of grace: love, repentance, and forgiveness. The supreme gift of grace is love, which works itself out in our lives in the following ways:

• I understand that I have needs. If we see our needs as weaknesses, we will hide our needs and limitations and call it self-reliance.
• I realize that having my needs met is experiencing love. If we deny that we have needs, we will not experience love.
• I freely admit that I desire to be loved.
• I choose to let you love me--on your terms, not mine. The degree to which I let you love me is the degree to which you can love me, no matter how much love you have for me. Letting you love me requires trust.
• I am fulfilled when I have experienced love.
• I am now able to love others out of my own fulfillment.

The sweetest gift of grace, according to the authors, is repentance. Repentance may not seem like a gift, but it makes sense when you realize that it is impossible without grace. Repentance doesn't mean doing something about our sin; it is admitting that we can do nothing about it. Sin cannot be "managed." Sin management (an oxymoron) shuts off the only resource we have to deal with our sin-trust. When we repent through trust, it is exclusively and entirely a gift of God's grace. Three specific inhibitors of repentance are isolation, pride, and wrong motive (seeking to please God rather than trusting God).

True repentance, which means admitting that we can do nothing about our sin, sets the stage for a community of grace.

"When failing strivers stumble into a community of grace, safety and vulnerable repentance, it radically disrupts their game plan. Suddenly they are face to face with a real tangible option of sweet freedom . . . 'Leaning into' (i.e. trusting) these truths applies the power of the cross to a previously unbreakable pattern."

The most mysterious gift of grace is forgiveness. This powerful gift has one purpose: to protect us from the insidious harm that comes from sin done against us. Forgiveness forms the foundation of our relationship with God and sustains our relationships with each other. Forgiveness produces results so far out of our normal experience that it feels mysterious. Forgiveness brings alienated enemies together again.

The seven keys to forgiveness are:

1. Admit something happened. We cannot forgive until we admit that we have been sinned against. This does not mean going on a fishing expedition, however. It applies only to things that we know about.
2. Forgive the consequences of the act done against you.
3. Tell God what happened to you.
4. Forgive the offender for your benefit. We must initiate the vertical transaction with God before we move into the horizontal transaction with others. "If we try to go on without forgiving the one who hurt us before God, or if we say, 'I'm not going to repent until they repent' we end up in bitterness, anger, resentment or jealousy. In our unwillingness to forgive before God, we become the issue."
5. Forgive the offender when they repent, for their sake. We forgive our offender with the goal of restoring the relationship, not just resolving the conflict. This requires that he/she repent as well.
6. Distinguish between forgiving and trusting your offender. Forgiveness cancels the debt, but it does not restore the credit rating. You don't have to trust the other person to forgive him or her. Trust is easily broken and restored very slowly.
7. Seek reconciliation and not just conflict resolution.

The ultimate goal of all this is to mature into God's dreams for you. "God has a ticket of destiny with your name written on it."

Spiritual growth, then, can be described in three phases:

• Phase 1: Healing the Needy Christian.
• Phase 2: Maturing the Healing Christian. Focus on applying, developing and processing the truths learned in phase one: love, grace and truth.
• Phase 3: Releasing the Maturing Christian. We become more Christ-centered. We naturally respond to life out of our new identity--a Christ like identity--that we live through grace and truth. We do not fear others' strengths. We understand them, submit to them, and benefit from them. The mature influence others, not so much out of the power of their position, but out of their persons.

This is a very helpful book that distills many principles of Christian maturity down to their essence. It is very freeing to learn that the way to please God is by trusting God, and not by spiritual performance. It should free many sincere, highly motivated Christians who are trying to please God by performance. Although I had been exposed to many of the principles in this book in a seminar format, I found the book extremely valuable in helping me to get a handle on these principles. I can recommend it very highly.

Thrall, Bill; McNichol, Bruce and Lynch, John: TrueFaced; NavPress, Colorado Springs; 2003; ISBN 1-57683-446-8