The Veil

I know a lot of Sunday School answers. I’m really good at Sunday School answers.
It’s obvious that as we grow in life, get a little older, have more experiences and therefore more wisdom (I hope), we are shaped. Things, circumstances and situations that we’re not even aware of yet have already changed the shape of our minds and even our hearts. We may never be able to pinpoint each and every life event that shapes us. But a little reflection and soul time can lead you to a few.

When you’re young, you want to believe everything is good. You are constantly basking in the naivety of your youth and you don’t even know it. What a beautiful thing. As you get older, and as those aforementioned things, circumstances and situations start to shape you, more distaste is uncovered in your once happy youthful world, a common process known as “growing up” or “becoming an adult”. You are permanently changed. You gain depth. You gain pain. You gain experiences that are etched in your memory whether you want them to be or not. You lose the freedom of naivety.

Perhaps the most important aspect of your life is the spiritual aspect. There are few things that rank higher in importance (none in my mind in fact) than the condition of your soul, your relationship with the Creator, and thoughts of an afterlife. Which is perhaps why it is so unnerving to witness the abuse of spiritual power.
My experiences in the spiritual area of life have left me trying to worship God in any other way but what is typical or widely accepted by the Christian culture. Because what is typical is now tainted. The condition of the heart is what is important, yes, but the actions and words used by others with darkened hearts have still scarred me, leaving me uncomfortable to worship in the same ways that were once so sincere and personal to me.
Why is it so much harder to release these hypocrites from their follies when we have all at at least one point in our life been a hypocrite ourselves?

I grew up in a box – a very comfortable box with church on Sundays, Christianity being taught and practiced at home, structured quiet times, heartfelt worship services, group prayers, and the like. I loved that box. I thrived in that box. And now that my four walls have been abrasively torn down, I mourn the box that once stood firm. I’m rebuilding now, rebuilding a different shape, maybe one without walls that served as blinders before.
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“This veil is not a beautiful thing and it is not a thing about which we commonly care to talk, but I am addressing the thirsting souls who are determined to follow God, and I know they will not turn back because the way leads temporarily through the blackened hills. The urge of God within them will assure their continuing the pursuit. They will face the facts however unpleasant and endure the cross for the joy set before them. So I am bold to name the threads out of which this inner veil is woven.

It is woven of the fine threads of the self-life, the hyphenated sins of the human spirit. They are not something we do, they are something we are and therein lies both their subtlety and their power.

To be specific, the self-sins are these: self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love and a host of others like them. They dwell too deep within us and are too much a part of our natures to come to our attention till the light of God is focused upon them. The grosser manifestations of these sins, egotism, exhibitionism, self-promotion, are strangely tolerated in Christian leaders even in circles of impeccable orthodoxy. They are so much in evidence as actually, for many people, to become identified with the gospel. I trust it is not a cynical observation to say that they appear these days to be a requisite for popularity in some sections of the Church visible. Promoting self under the guise of promoting Christ is currently so common as to excite little notice.

One should suppose that proper instruction in the doctrines of man’s depravity and the necessity for justification through the righteousness of Christ alone would deliver us from the power of the self-sins; but p, it does not work out that way. Self can live unrebuked at the very altar. It can watch the bleeding Victim die and not be in the least affected by what it sees. It can fight for the faith of the Reformers and preach eloquently the creed of salvation by grace, and gain strength by its efforts. To tell all the truth, it seems actually to feed upon orthodoxy and is more at home in a Bible Conference than in a tavern. Our very state of longing after God may afford it an excellent condition under which to thrive and grow.

Self is the opaque veil that hides the Face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction.”
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– A.W. Tozer, Pursuit of God, Chapter 3 “Removing the Veil”