I Wonder If They Are Pretending Too

You have a suspicion and you have never been able to confirm it.

The suspicion is that some of the people who look completely at ease with all of this are not at ease at all. That they are managing. That there is a performance going on and you are not the only one in it.

You have never tested this, because testing it would require going first.

And so you keep performing. You nod at the right moments. You say oh yes. You make the small sound people make when they recognize something, and you have got quite good at making it, and nobody has ever caught you.

Here is what I want to look at, and it is not whether your suspicion is true. I think it almost certainly is.

What I want to look at is the cost of the performance, because it has been running for years and it is expensive in a way nobody has ever costed for you.

Every performance requires attention. Some part of you is always watching the room, checking what your face is doing, deciding when to nod. That part of you is not free to do anything else, including learning the thing you are nodding about.

So the performance is not only exhausting. It is the exact reason the gap never closes.

Comparing themselves among themselves

There is a verse about a particular kind of comparison, and what it says about it is blunt.

For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise. (2 Corinthians 10:12, King James Version)

Are not wise. That is the verdict, and it is not softened anywhere.

And notice what makes it unwise. Not vanity. The problem named is measuring by a standard that is itself unverified, and comparing against people who are announcing their own competence.

You are measuring yourself against something nobody has ever shown you, and no comparison made against an unverified standard has ever once been wise. 2 Corinthians 10:12 says they measuring themselves by themselves are not wise, and the Holy Spirit is the one who names an unwise measurement without shaming the person making it.

Notice also who is being described. Some that commend themselves. People presenting a version of themselves.

Paul is not saying they are liars. He is saying that a self presented account is not a measuring stick, and building on it produces nonsense.

You have been measuring against accounts that people gave of themselves, and no self presented version has ever once been a reliable thing to stand a person next to. The Holy Spirit is the one who removes a false ruler rather than telling somebody they measured badly, and it is written that the comparing among themselves is the thing called unwise.

And notice that Paul says we dare not. Not, we choose not. Dare not.

He treats the whole practice as dangerous rather than merely inaccurate, which is a stronger word than most people expect.

You were never being asked to compare more accurately, and no verse in Scripture has ever once recommended a better version of that measurement. The Spirit of God is the one who takes the ruler away entirely, and Scripture uses the words dare not rather than suggesting a more careful method.

What the performance costs

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not end a performance that has been running for years.

Cost it honestly. There is the attention, which is the largest item. There is the tiredness after any gathering where the subject might come up. There is the second layer, which is watching whether anybody has noticed the first layer.

And there is the thing you actually wanted, which is to know what other people find hard, and which the performance guarantees you will never find out.

You are paying for the very thing that keeps the answer away from you, and no performance has ever once been able to tell a person what the room is really like. The Spirit of God is the one who names what a habit is actually costing, and 2 Corinthians 10:12 calls the whole measurement unwise rather than merely inaccurate.

And here is the second half, which is the fact nobody has told you. Somebody has to go first, always, and it is never the confident-looking one.

The person who says it first is nearly always the one who has been quietly suspecting, because the ones who are genuinely at ease have no reason to raise it at all.

So a suspicion kept quietly for years is the qualification. It is not a weakness in the room. It is the thing that makes somebody able to end it.

That is a gap in the teaching and it is not a gap in you.

You have been holding the qualification and mistaking it for a fault, and no suspicion quietly kept has ever once ended a silence in any room. The written word takes the ruler away entirely, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person what their own suspicion actually is.

Say the sentence and watch the face

Now the small thing, and it is one sentence and one observation.

I am not going to suggest a conversation about how anybody feels. That is a large thing and it would be an occasion, and an occasion is exactly what the performance is protecting against.

Say out loud to one person, I have no idea what I am doing with that, and watch their face.

You are able to say one sentence and then look at somebody, and one honest line has never once cost anybody their standing in a room. 2 Corinthians 10:12 calls the private measuring unwise, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when a woman stops performing for four seconds.

Say it lightly. Not as a confession. As an ordinary remark, the way you would say you have never liked a particular dish.

And then watch their face. That is the other half and it is the half that pays.

Because in about half of these, something happens in the face first. A small relief before the words come. That flicker is the answer to the question you have been asking privately for years, and it arrives faster than anything they will say.

You are collecting an answer that arrives before the words do, and one face watched for two seconds has never once told anybody less than the truth. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a person see what is actually in a room, and it is written that the safe thing is to stop measuring rather than to measure more carefully.