Behind Our Masks by Keith Miller

Former Director, Laity Lodge (Texas); author of The Taste of New Wine

Some years ago I woke up to the fact that although I had tried to commit my life to God in Christ two years before, I was having a terrible time communicating the things I intuitively knew to be true to other members of the church I attended. The people who were a part of the adult Sunday school class I taught seemed to accept me and believe what I told them, but their lives were not changing, at least not in any observable way.

Out of loneliness and discouragement I asked eleven other people to meet with me one night a week for an eight weeks' trial period. The only criterion for joining the group was that each of the people had to want to give his life to God (though he might not be able to do it). We were not going to argue about the existence of God, but were going to try to find out how each of us might get to know Him personally as He is revealed in Jesus Christ. This was to be the sole purpose of our meeting.

We decided to experiment with our lives during that period, and to report each week concerning our failures, our joys, and the ridiculous things that happened as we tried consciously to take Christ with us through our daily and nightly routine. We made it sort of a secretive thing--an underground experiment. And we came back to each meeting with a kind of excitement as we began to see how strangely timid and insecure we were in our faith. We could laugh at ourselves and vicariously experience each other's fears, joys, and insights with Christ in the center of life.

As those eight weeks lengthened into two years, we found that we had never really known each other before the group started. We had not been able to communicate because we were basically afraid of each other, and didn't know how to reveal our true selves without being embarrassed.

Now, some years and many small groups later, we have discovered a way in new groups to slip quietly and safely under the masks people wear, into their world of hopes and dreams and fears and loves.

I first heard about this method while living among the Quakers in Richmond, Indiana. They were rediscovering the art of group conversation. I think this art which is being reborn today will be a significant contribution to the solution of the terrible isolation we experience in the Church.

Ideally, one should begin with a group of about twelve people. (A larger group involves a different technique.) As you sit in a circle, so each person can see the face of every other person, the leader explains, "We are going to take a few minutes to get acquainted. In order to do this we are going to ask ourselves several questions. These questions are not 'loaded,' but simply represent a way we have found to get to know each other in a short time."

The first question has three parts: 

• "State your name." 
• "Where did you live between the ages of seven and twelve years?" (You may have lived in several places during that time, but state the place that stands out most in your mind.) 
• "How many brothers and sisters did you have at that time?" 

The leader answers first, then goes around the circle asking each person to answer the question.

My own answer might be: "My name is Keith Miller. Between the ages of seven and twelve years I lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I had one brother at that time who has since been killed in a plane crash during the second World War."

The second question is, "How did you heat your home at that time (pot-bellied stove, open fireplace, gas burners, etc.)?" In answering, the leader tries to think of some humorous or vivid incident concerning the heat in his home (perhaps burning himself, being cold in the morning, or having to get up and fetch the wood).

My answer might be: "We heated our home at that time with gas since Tulsa was the 'oil and gas center of the world' and there were gas fields nearby. We had little individual heaters in each room with the clay mantles which get scratched by matches. We also had a floor furnace."

The third question is, "Where in your home at that time was the center of human warmth (e.g.: the kitchen, parents' bedroom, dining room, etc.)?" Or it may not have been a room at all; it may have been a person around whom you sensed an aura of safeness and warmth.

My own answer might be: "I think the center of human warmth at our house was the dining room. My father was in the oil exploration business and was away from home a great deal. When he was at home, we all ate dinner in the evening in the dining room. On the surface it was sort of a training ground for us. My mother was determined to make gentlemen out of her two sons. But deeper in my experience I remember the sense of expectancy and excitement I felt as my mother and father discussed vacations we might take and things we might do as a family. Also, I can remember when they were angry with each other. I felt a real sense of anxiety inside. Of course, I couldn't admit this to anybody, but I remember I wanted them to get back together somehow and love each other so that we would be happy again."

At this point the leader can explain that what we are actually doing is tracing the human experience of security. A child first knows security in terms of physical warmth. As his horizons broaden, he senses security in the warmth and acceptance of the people around him. (It is good to note that some people simply do not have any remembrance of a center of human warmth in their home or in any person. The leader by mentioning this may put at ease people for whom this experience is not a reality.)

The fourth and last question is asked to the group as a whole so that people can volunteer answers if they have any. It is not about the past but may relate to an incident in the present and therefore may threaten someone who is afraid to reveal himself. The question is, "When, if ever, in your life did God become more than 'a word'? When did He become a living being, alive in your own thinking?" We are not necessarily asking for an account of a conversion experience. This transition in one's thinking may have taken place while listening to music, or watching a sunset, or in a conversation with a person who loved him. By this time people in the group may know each other well enough to volunteer answers right away. If not, the leader tells of his own experience.

My answer might be: "When I was a little boy I had a brother who was five years older and who was a terrific athlete. All day long I had the job of trying to be tough and athletic--trying to be a man in order to impress my brother. So at night when my mother came into my room and sat down beside me, I can remember a feeling of real closeness with her. I liked her to touch me, to put her hand on my face or my arm, because there in the dark I could be what I really was, a little boy, without the burden of being something I was not. She used to say a prayer before I went to sleep, and one time (I imagine I was about eight years old) she looked at me and said, 'Honey, you should say a prayer, too; God's listening for you to talk to Him.' And she taught me the Lord's Prayer. Then she left the room. I remember lying there and looking up toward the corner of the room, and the awe I felt as I realized that God was somehow in that room, listening for what I might say to Him. For many years I buried this experience under marbles and basketballs and martinis and trying to make a big living. But when I became a Christian, I remembered this little-boy incident again as God became a reality in my conscious life."

The leader should not be surprised if someone begins to weep during these questions. Most of us are so isolated that memories of our past have been carefully locked away. For healthy people there is nothing psychologically threatening about these questions, since they can be answered with a brief and non-committal answer. And when one person is deeply moved concerning his own past, the others immediately begin to love him and be concerned about him; and a new kind of group is formed--a group in which agape love is the prevailing atmosphere.

After this last question has been asked, the group is in the midst of a discussion on the reality of God in human life. The leader may close this conversation by summarizing the discussion and pointing out that, according to Christian belief, although every man's experience of security and acceptance begins with physical warmth and graduates to human warmth, he is made so that his security will never be complete until he finds it in God.

What this discussion does is to take a group of strangers and within an hour's time get them to talk personally about the most pressing problems of human life. I cannot describe the sense of joy and of belonging which has almost miraculously developed in times spent this way.

But more important, we have found that living Christianity is not at all what we had thought it was. For us it is no longer a religion of patterns of behavior and study. It is actually not a "religion" at all, but real life, life in which we are free to be honest about ourselves and to accept and love each other and God, because the Living Christ is in the midst of us--winning us to Himself and to His world. And suddenly in our struggles we have something real to tell . . . something we have "seen and heard."

• An informative article about applying FAW principles to one's daily life is The Jesus Style in Relationships.

• Sam Shoemaker's Twelve Steps to Power

• To read about the Four Primary Relationships check out The Realm of Right Relationships