Changing Clothes

Ingrid Bergman starred in the 1944 movie, Gaslight — a story about a woman being psychologically manipulated into believing that she’s going insane. This is how gaslighting has come to describe scenarios where one person deliberately attempts to re-tell events through a skewed self-serving filter, in order to manipulate someone else into doubting their own natural perception of those same events.

We find a variation of this in Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. The emperor is conned into believing that only an astute and refined person can perceive his new clothing — so not only is the emperor being deceived, but everyone in his court was thrown into crisis, doubting their own perception, torn between what their eyes clearly see . . . and what social conformity demands of them.

Let’s face it, social conformity has been attempting to gaslight us since the day we were born – telling us what we need to have, and how we need to act . . . and how odd we must be if we disagree. And in a world where the ethics and mores are as changeable and capricious as the latest fashions, we become culturally conditioned to doubt our natural instinct to question the change . . . for fear of being ridiculed as out of step with the times.

So whatever the new rules are, we best not run afoul of them – but if we wait long enough, the current rules will have been over-written . . . the way the old ones were. Every generation tries to re-imagine the world, pushing it through a skewed self-serving filter, until it approximates a world that conforms to their manipulative desires. Could it be that like the emperor, we’ve been wearing the clothing of our own vanity? What if I told you that you’ve been wearing old clothes, long destined for the dustbin – would you think I was gaslighting you?

In Colossians 3:9 Paul invites us to quit lying to ourselves and one another, and to remember that we’ve already taken off those old clothes, and the madness associated with them. But this invitation isn’t just another iteration of rules (Colossians 2:20-23), for in Christ we are dead to those rules. No, this is an invitation to remember that as image bearers of God, all of the superficial things that divide us evaporate in Christ (Colossians 3:10,11).

For these are the new clothes we wear (Colossians 3:12-15) as God’s beloved – woven into the fabric of humility, meekness, and patience are the threads of compassion, kindness, and forgiveness . . . pulled together in a harmony of love. And all those who wear this garment are filled with grateful hearts and the peace of Christ. Now, if you ask me – those are some pretty spiffy duds! Makes you wonder why you keep trying to put on those old rags of the old self – when clearly the vestments of the new self have been purchased for you at such an extravagant cost.

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So maybe it’s time you started working on that rewrite . . .