Look Me in the Eyes

The other day, my friend Kyle and I were walking around at the Ann Arbor Art Fair when we were approached by a self-identified traveling monk named Mukunda. I assume he was Hindu because he handed Kyle and me two copies of the Bhagavad Gita and told us he was on a mission to spread the message of this book everywhere he went. To be honest, this caught me a bit off-guard. Maybe I’ve been socialized too strongly by western media, but my schema of a traveling monk led me to expect something more along the lines of “do you have any wisdom to impart?” than a proselytizing effort.

As he told us about the wonders of meditation and how this book would teach us how to commune with God, I noticed that there was something in his eyes: a sort of vacant shifting that you see in someone who is anxious or insecure about what they’re doing. So I just asked him in that moment if what he was doing made him nervous, if this sort of thing brings out his insecurities. Although he was resistant at first, he admitted that he feels insecure at times because he is not yet “fully liberated”, but said he thought it could happen to him in his lifetime.

 As Kyle and I chewed on the interaction, including the part where Mukunda didn’t let us have the books unless we paid for them (though he presented them by saying he was giving them away and just asking for a donation so they can print more), I told Kyle that Mukunda’s uncertain eyes did not convince me that he was on a path to liberation nearly as much as if he had looked into my eyes with conviction and compassion. Kyle recalled a video one of our pastors had shown us at a retreat a couple weeks before:

In the video, Penn Jillette, a famous comedian/illusionist (of Penn & Teller fame) and noted atheist and skeptic, describes an interaction he has with a Christian man after one of his shows where the man hands him a copy of The New Testament. Kyle recalled that the one element that struck him so much about the video was how Penn stated, then repeated the phrase “he looked me in the eyes”. It seemed that this fact was at the basis of Penn’s later declarations that this was “a good man”, and that he was honest and genuine.

This interaction with Mukunda and the resulting conversation with Kyle made me wonder how many of the students I minister to on campus could do the same; whether they would tell their friends of the saving grace of Jesus Christ with true conviction and compassion; the kind that doesn’t hide. The kind that looks you right in the eyes. Such conviction is rare because the only reason a person doesn’t hide is if they have nothing to hide. This is the nature of a clear conscience. And the only way to believe you have nothing to hide is to either convince yourself that you don’t (through justifying the things that cause you shame), or to believe deeply that all the shameful things have been paid for; that you are not held to account for them. I think Mukunda was hiding something, but those who have been washed clean have no reason to (John 3:16-21).

But my dream is for a Church that knows who she is, a Church full of men and women who have no reason to hide; a Church that looks you in the eyes. Imagine what he Church would look like if every saint met that character requirement of a deacon, to hold to the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience (1 Timothy 3:9). So Church, I guess I’ll leave you with a question: Do you proclaim the Gospel of Jesus while looking the world in the eyes? In other words, have you actually allowed him to remove all your shame, all your reasons to hide?

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