“It is better to live naked in truth than clothed in fantasy.� These words slipped from the lips of a little old man so frail he looked as if he was going to fall over while getting on stage. He overflowed with deep passion and experience. His very presence consumed me and drew me to a place that I had not been in quite some time. It is a place that at one point in my life I would have said I was very close to and yet for whatever reason, I sat there that day…in remembrance. I had to wonder how I got there. How I had gotten so far from where I had once been?

I use to long to for truth. I would spend hours of my days reading and in prayer. I was somewhat of a hermit crab, never really venturing outside my shell. Not that this was entirely healthy, I don’t think anyone should lock themselves away from reality. People out of touch I think find it hard to relate to others. What I am trying to say is, when it got down to it, I was there in that place for one reason alone: I wanted freedom! Freedom from a life governed by the wants of my flesh! Freedom from the opinions of others, of a life free of all the stuff that had held me captive. The Scripture clearly states that if we know the Truth, that the Truth shall make us free. I wanted truth so bad in my younger years that I would have done just about anything to find it. I would have done anything to be free.

Now as I sit here and get real with myself, I am seeing that this isn’t who I am anymore. Somehow I have settled for something less. Somewhere I have something that makes me feel good but doesn’t give me anything more but a false look at whom I really am. Somehow I have become all right with my mere glimpses of God, said I have seen enough, told myself there’s no need to see anymore. I have become the one thing that I always hoped I never would be: “Complacent�; just all right with how things. But hey, why should I care when I have so many distractions to make me feel good?

The world is great at elusion. Everywhere we turn there is some ad or person telling us that if we live this certain way of life then everything will be good. If you just owned this new, top of line, cutting edge, nobody-has-it-but-you, do-dad, then everything would just fall into place bring you to a place of completion; that is until we come out with version 3.896, so on and so on and so on….

“It is better to live naked in truth than clothed in fantasy.� Those words hit me like a ton of bricks. Wow! Such a deep revelation that so goes against our everyday modern culture. We live in a time where it seems that everything is about self-medication and hiding from the reality of your life. You hurt? Well here…take this, it might not fix the problem, but hey at least you won’t have to think about it anymore. The saddest part of it all is that we are all right with this type of living. In fact, we probably buy into it just like everyone else. I know that I have. Not only does this take our pain but it takes our joys as well. Our true joy at least. Numbing our very beings. Making our feelings disappear. Making it, I believe harder and harder to truly be who I believe we were created to be.

I don’t believe that being naked is such a bad thing. In fact, I truly think God knew what He was doing when setting it up this way. Hard times bring forth character. Not that I invite such things, but when I go through them I know this now, “that it is better to be naked in truth than clothed in fantasy.�

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