“You know this is all BS,” said the man sitting next to me. I did not know the gentleman, but I was desperately trying not to think the same thing.
Great platitudes were being espoused, yet the track record painted a completely different picture. With no shortage of self-righteousness, they pontificated about all their amazing work and, just as quickly, made bold promises hovering just out on the horizon.
Shaking his head in disgust, my seatmate stood up and said to me, “Classic tale of two tongues.”
Human beings possess an astonishing ability to speak two languages at once: the language of the lips and the language of the life. The tragedy comes when the two are completely incongruent. Every person tells two stories: the one spoken aloud and the one embodied in action. Eventually, one exposes the other.
We live in a culture saturated with declarations. Public virtue is constantly announced, branded, posted, and performed. Yet the measure of integrity has never been what we say. It is whether our lives bear witness to our words.
No sector of our lives is immune to espousing one thing while our actions manifest something entirely different. And, of course, this is not new. It has been part of the human condition from the very beginning. Scripture, in fact, is relentless in exposing this incongruence. The prophets thundered against lips that praised God while hands oppressed their neighbors. Jesus reserved some of his sharpest words not for outsiders, but for those whose public devotion concealed private corruption:
“This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
— Gospel of Matthew 15:8
This outward, performative behavior is often rooted in a “fake it until you make it” mentality, which inevitably leads to imposter syndrome. The authentic self clearly does not measure up, so embodying a charade-self appears to be the only option…but it’s not.
The pivot begins when we can find a space – and a people – where we feel safe enough to be ourselves. Not what others project us to be, not what we assume we are supposed to be, but rather our true, authentic selves: beloved children of God, uniquely created in God’s image.
That is the space where true wholeness resides: authentic, congruent, consistent, and fully alive in the fullness of who we are created to be.
Paraphrasing Augustine, “The soul finds peace when word and action finally speak the same language”….
BP