Acting Holy When You Don’t Feel Like It (May 14, 2006)

"If you act normal, they'll never know!"

My mother discovered this secret early in life, and passed it along to her children as a coping mechanism for the eccentric. Mom wasn't crazy, but she was unique - Christopher Walken on a good day - and she knew that wearing weirdness on your sleeve was not always the best way to make comfortable the people around you. So, like a foreigner keeping quiet to mask an accent, Mom conscientiously did what she could to blend in.

It did not always work. For some reason she thought it was funny to pretend to be dumb as box of socks, and more than once we said to her, "Uh, Mom, I don't think anybody knows you're kidding." Her deadpan delivery was a little too disciplined at times - as though she felt a wink might spoil the joke.

But mostly she blended in, and I appreciate that. Surely it was an effort at times. But why shouldn't it have been? I have come to believe that resisting some natural currents in our personality is part of what it means to be human, and much of what it means to be holy. Those who simply give in to every impulse and instinct are rude
and dangerous and crazy. They are like animals, and no fun to be around.

Mom's dictum, "If you act normal, they'll never know [that you're nuts]" has a natural analogue in, "If you act holy, they'll never know [that you're evil]." I do not advocate hypocrisy - wearing a façade of holiness while you bury murder victims in your basement - but I do urge the discipline of doing what is right even when your nature rebels against it.

That is when holiness counts most, I think. Holiness is most pure precisely when it is an act - a conscious decision, a violation of our nature, a self-thwarting of preference. You don't have to command me to enjoy General Tso's chicken - I can't do otherwise! But you do have to command me to be kind and pure and diligent. For those virtues I have no choice but to "get into character" like a stage actor who has struggled to learn his lines.

It is not wrong for weirdos to observe normal people and try to imitate them as best they can. Nor is it wrong (far from it!) for sinners to observe Christ and try hard as they can to be like him.