Mat 23:27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.
Most all of you know that RASN’s wear saintly disguises. If they claim to be a Christian, they wear a mask of righteousness. But it’s only a mask. Others who make no claim to religion at all still put on whatever type of mask which brings them praise and hides what they really are.
But all masks slip. Often these slips are very brief and usually go unnoticed because most people aren’t looking, and even if they are, they don’t understand. They write off the glimpse they caught of what was behind the mask as their imagination, and of course the gas-lighting of the wicked one encourages that.
Nevertheless, if we know that RASN’s exist and how they hide and function, we can grow in our ability to recognize the reality behind the disguise. I will give you an example.
Once I was in the home of someone I had known for quite sometime. Professing Christian. Regular church member. But the occasion was a dinner for a fairly large number of people and this fellow was able to pay caterers to set up the dinner. I was standing off at the edge of the kitchen visiting with someone when I noticed two ladies from the catering service come in with large trays of food to be served. One of them looked at the host and smiled and said, “Oh, hey, I know you! We went to high school together.” She called him by name and said it was good to see him.
His reaction? The mask slipped. He gave her what I would call a look of contempt, said something like, “oh, yeah,” then turned his back on her and walked away. After all, you see, she was just the hired help. A servant to be used. And no doubt she knew that he claimed to be a solid Christian.
When I saw that mask slippage and that quick look of contempt and air of superiority flash through for just a few seconds, I was seeing what this man really was. But I didn’t realize the significance of it at the time. Those slips happen so quickly and as I said we blow them off as something perhaps we are imagining. After all, the rest of the time we see the mask.
I can’t tell you how many times I have seen these mask slips and yet I still didn’t get it. I think I am finally starting to wake up, but I still have to fight the temptation to just blow off what I thought I saw. After all, we don’t want to believe someone we think we know is actually someone we don’t know at all.
Whitewashed tombs full of rotting bones. That is the reality.
Live free
It is hard to know the reality of truly evil intentions and wicked people within our families, churches and friend groups – but they are. Your last sentence caps it – that is reality. If we don’t accept it we are essentially living a dual existence…… and that will never feel free…….because it isn’t.
Z
I concur with Live free’s comment above and with Pastor Crippen’s last statement also-“That is the reality.”
I spent nearly a lifetime not living in reality regarding the depth of evil within most of my family of origin. Actually, all of them are now unmasked as vile people who are accepting of abuse, comfortable with abuse that is visible and audible to them, abuse enablers, embracers of abusers with open arms, dismissive of the trauma and devastation a lifetime of being the victim of such evil by both parents who physically beat us children and each other and abused in many other ways all day every day. Making us live in daily terror of our death or one of our “parents’ death.
I was the only truthteller in my whole large clan/fake christian cult of codependent relatives and lifelong friends of theirs. All of them obvious hypocrites to me as even a young girl. And therefore I was the Black Sheep and Scapegoat. Now I wear those titles as badges of honor!
The description of them as “Whitewashed tombs full of rotting bones. That is the reality.” resonates with me. Because for so much of my life I went against my own discernment and actual eyesight, hearing, experiences and knowledge that they were wearing masks in public while they were demons within the clan/cult safety net. No one would ever dare call them out as hypocrites when they were abusing us children right in front of them! The masks more than slipped for moments only. They were comfortable not even needing to wear them in front of their “gang” of fraud Christians just like them. So I lived in “UNREALITY” for much of my life simply because they were “family” and since EVERYONE who was a supposed Christian-even pastors-didn’t blink at their abuses and double lives. I survived on dreams and hopes and wishes for a real family, real familial love, connection…Normal stuff that most kids take for granted. I didn’t realize that THESE TYPES-RASNS-aren’t capable of those things. It was NEVER going to happen for me. That is the reality.
My ex-siblings (I am in No Contact with my entire abuse embracing clan) only think their parents “love” them because they jump through every hoop they are required to and MORE in order to stay on the “right side” of their abusers. Always have. Extreme codependency which they all mistake as familial “love”. Not even a close resemblance.
Although I am several years into No Contact (which sadly grew as time showed me more and more of the abuse embracers in that clan or even those who thought staying “neutral” was an option when my husband and I were the victims of extreme violence planned and carried out by the abusers-not OK with me!)
I STILL can’t wrap my head around how not one person I knew all my life as a professing Christian would take a stand even mildly for righteousness and godliness. And the masks being worn by the abusers were not often bothered with in front to these people! They saw it all many times! Even in my adulthood. But in their view, obviously dictated by their father satan, is that my “sin” of exposing and expelling (Biblically commanded) the hypocrites and criminally violent professing Christian abusers from my life was WORSE than the actual abuse by my family of origin they’d commonly witnessed all my life! A violent bloody weapon attack on us was par for the course to them. They all dutifully engaged in the smear campaign against us that followed our calling the police for that violent crime, thereby exposing them as abusers and my deciding to go permanent No Contact with “family”. They all defamed us to as many church people and others we long knew as possible, ostracized us, shunned us and enlisted everyone they could to do the same. (So laughably predictable! AFTER WE went No Contact they decided to call it “shunning US”! Oh, how rejection hurts the RASNS and their allies in evil!)
I often think of how the Bible talks about how “satan entered into Judas” through his love of money and greed. And I think of all these professing Christians who each had that moment when “satan entered into them”. Through the opening they gave him of idolizing an abusive system that groomed and bribed them all their adult lives to “serve them” in return for their loyalty and silence. Repayment with regular doses of various self-serving material gain. Just like Judas. But even Judas had some semblance of remorse when he came to the realization of the evil he’d done and tried to give the money back. I am certain not one of my former clan will for a moment feel any remorse for what they’ve done. That will have to be left to God bring about repayment for their evil and His perfect justice. That is good with me.
Kate
Thank you for this truthful, painful, and sadly typical (for those of us here) comment.
This sentence: ” They were comfortable not even needing to wear them {mask} in front of their “gang” of fraud Christians just like them.”
Years ago I commented on a psychology website and said that if psychopaths were given the freedom (no repercussions) for speaking the truth about who they were, many would. Surprisingly, a psychopath responded back.
He said that he was shocked a normie understood. (They think people with a conscience are stupid, weak, and incapable of understanding the true depth and complete depravity of their true self. Oh, contraire!!!!) He went on to say (brag) that when he and his bros talked, they shared all the truths about themselves, they spilled. And they reveled in it!! (In this current generation these evil ones can find each other online. Or as in your case, the church!) They shared tips and tricks and I can only guess that he isn’t rare in his experiences. I’m sure many do this.
Your family was also like mine although not with any physical abuse. You are brave to continue to stay “no contact.” It is only when God wakes someone up, that they can truly escape from that form of complete mind-control. It’s a stronghold that is spiritual.
Thank you for sharing even though it’s such a painful reality.
Z
Thank you Kate for your comments. And for your understanding of the depth of this depravity-as you aptly termed it. And it IS a spiritual stronghold at play that I was and still am up against. All my life. And they’ll be forming weapons against me all their lives. Thanks for discerning that truth.. Demonic activity was all around us. Probably also psychopaths like you described. My husband saw it right away. But he was kind of stuck with and tolerant of my “hopes and dreams” about a real family-my “magical thinking”. Despite my Black Sheep status as the only truth teller about them and my survival instinct to distance myself from a young age. Cognitive Dissonance.
I’m so sorry you had to experience and deal with toxic family in your life too. You seem to have a good perspective on it all though. God always provides what we need!
Staying No Contact permanently is an easy choice because I KNOW it was the Lord Who showed me how demonic they really were during that final violent attack on us. God “parted my Red Sea” for me after I’d reluctantly been in bondage due to ungodly family/soul ties, abuse being normalized by everyone I knew, church people’s false teachings and idolizing the idea of “family” above my safety and value to God as His beloved child. I saw and heard their demonic faces and voices more clearly than ever during and after that attack. And I knew in my spirit what I had to do. God provided my way of escape when I couldn’t figure out a way to do it ever before. “Divorce my whole family and clan?” It was a “dramatic” and bloody Divine intervention. But so necessary. I needed to know spiritually what I was up against.
I was lost at first when I had to cut ties with the entire clan. It’s all I ever knew as my “family, lifelong friends and church friends”. They were none of those things in reality. Not one person was righteous so I had to depart completely from all of them.
So I’m having to start over trying to make a family of choice and new friends. It’s hard nowadays to make new friends. Covid seems to have done something to people’s openness. Isolation became normal and even preferred. And the general atmosphere of the country is one of increasing division and “otherness”-suspicion of new people. But I’d never ever let such evil back into my life when the Lord Himself was instrumental in removing it. “He stood with me and gave me strength.” As much as I had tried firm boundaries and consequences and periods of No Contact before, I didn’t have the strength to cut all ties on my own. I’ll be obedient to His commands about removing poisonous fraudulent christian wolves from my life and not look back.
Jesus is always my closest Friend and if that is all I ever have, I know that He is enough.
God bless you, Kate.
Lynn
We like to think we imagined the mask slipping because the alternative is unpleasant. The alternative means acknowledging that someone we thought we knew was hiding their true nature – a nature that is anti-Christ and full of entitlement. This becomes especially hard when it’s family.
Followers of Christ are called out of darkness and into the light. So when we see the mask slip on other fellow light bearers and their darkness is revealed, our natural minds want to excuse and rationalize it away. It wants to hold onto the falsehood instead of responding to the truth that has been revealed.
Remember to believe people when they show you who they are. Words come and go, so pay attention to the fruit of their lives and how they handle being confronted with their sin. A true believer will repent. A RASN won’t. So don’t let the slips of the masks fool you. Be wise as serpents yet innocent as doves. Walk in the freedom Christ gave you. For whom the son sets free is free indeed.
Jeff Crippen
Well stated. Wisdom!