Masks

Why do we wear masks?

Masks are interesting objects. Sometimes we wear them for protection—while working, playing sports, or guarding ourselves from harm. A hockey goalie wears a mask to protect his face. In those moments, a mask serves a clear and honest purpose.

Other times, we wear masks for very different reasons.

At Halloween, for example, masks allow us to pretend—to become something we are not. And that detail matters more than we realize. A mask, in that context, gives us permission to step outside ourselves, to hide, to perform, to act without being fully seen.

And sometimes, that instinct doesn’t stay in costume.

We use masks—figuratively—to hide our true selves so we can act in ways we would never act openly. We do things in secret that we would not do in the light. And when something is done in secret, we convince ourselves we can get away with it. After all, only you know. Maybe only a few people know.

But that quiet voice inside—the one that distinguishes right from wrong—knows. And it doesn’t stay silent. It burns. It resists. It presses against what you are doing. And instead of responding to it, we fight it. We tell ourselves it’s fine. We justify. We normalize. We convince ourselves that because no one sees, it doesn’t count.

But it doesn’t go away.

Over time, this kind of self-deception doesn’t just affect behavior—it infects the spirit. Slowly, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. And if you stay in that space long enough—pretending, justifying, hiding—the lie eventually becomes truth to you.

And when that happens, a person becomes almost unreachable.

At that point, reason doesn’t reach you. Conversation doesn’t reach you. Love doesn’t reach you. Logic doesn’t reach you. The only thing that can reach a person there is a deep renewal of the spirit—a breaking and rebuilding that only God can do.

Because continual self-deception hardens the heart.

Wearing a mask may feel comfortable when you’re doing something wrong. But if you stay behind it long enough, the mask no longer conceals who you are.

The mask becomes who you are.

And that brings me to the truth that anchors this reflection:

Darkness thrives in anonymity.

The more we dwell in darkness—believing that only we are aware of it—the more that darkness defines us. And when someone becomes fully immersed in darkness, only the Holy Spirit, only God Himself, can pull them back into the light.

We pray no one reaches that point. Yet we know some will, and some already have.

Darkness thrives in anonymity—but truth, once embraced, still has the power to set us free.

2 Thessalonians 2:10–12 (ESV)

“They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”