Sun 9:30a Class; 10:30a Worship; 11:35a Communion
Bible Bites
Sellers' Disease
Peter Sellers (who famously portrayed Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies) once said, "If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am." On another occasion he joked, "There is no me. I do not exist... There used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed."
Sellers was a brilliant comedic actor, but was plagued his whole career by personal problems. Many problems were of his own making. He was a control freak. He could be selfish and childish. He used drugs. He was hard to get along with. In the latter years of his career, many of the people he worked with felt that he was mentally unstable and should have sought help.
The quotes above reveal the challenge and danger of acting. The best actors are those who are able to create lifelike characters who are nothing like themselves. Actors make a living pretending to be somebody else. The danger is that some actors, like Sellers, lose their identities in the process. Sellers often remarked that he really had no idea who he was. He was most comfortable being someone else through his movie characters. I'd call it "Sellers' Disease".
There is a Bible word that describes this. It is the New Testament word "hypocrite". This is a transliteration of the Greek word hupcrites. Jesus used this word in reference to the scribes and Pharisees, the religious leaders of his day (see Matthew 23.13ff). The word originated in Greek theater when actor replied back to the chorus in a play, turning a speech into a dialogue. Then it came to mean a stage actor. Then it came to mean a person who acted in real life, someone who pretended to be something he was not, especially in his moral life. In English, this latter meaning is what most of us associate with this word.
The real danger of hypocrisy is that we cease being ourselves. We spend all of our time pretending to be someone else, and we get quite good at it. But we do this at the price of our own personalities. Our task in life and faith is be the same person through and through. Our quest is to be the same person on the inside as we are on the outside. Our challenge is to be the same kind of person no matter the circumstances or crowd.
This is not to say that if we are rotten on the inside that we should strive to continue in our rottenness. We must cleanse the inward self and orient the inner man to true godliness (Philippians 3.7-11). Then we make sure the outer man is consistent with the inner man. "For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he" (Proverbs 23.7a).
The ultimate cure for Sellers' Disease is to constantly check our motives. Jesus said, "Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 6.1). The only opinion that counts is God's opinion. The opinion I should be worried about is God's opinion. If I will shape my inner life and outer life by that sole standard of approval — by the approval that comes from God, not man (Acts 5.29), then I can always be myself.
Do you know who you are?
