Living Transparent

In C.S. Lewis's "The Great Divorce" there are two kinds of people in the book. The people in hell are ghostly and have no substance. They tend to be unhappy and make excuses for not being happy instead of facing reality. The people who are in heaven are solid and filled with joy and compassion. They work hard to convince the ghostly people to stay in heaven and find the joy they seek. The solid people are naked and are perfectly happy being this way. This is a great analogy for how we as Christians should be during each and every day of our lives here on earth. I do not mean we should go without clothes, but we should live our lives as though we had nothing to hide. This is actually shown in scripture as well in the fact that Adam and Eve did not know they were naked until sin entered the world. Gen. 3: 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they ?knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves ??loin coverings[1]. Adam and Eve had nothing to hide from one another until they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Then they hid themselves from God and from each other. If we live our lives completely open and transparent we obtain freedom. The simple fact that there is nothing anyone can hold against us since everyone knows it all anyway shows one of the many ways our honesty and transparency allows our freedom from bondage. James 5:16 Therefore, ?confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be ?healed. ?The effective ?prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.[2] If we are not transparent there is no way we will ever be obedient to this passage and in not being obedient to God's word in any part we lose part of the blessing it is to walk with Christ. By being transparent with each other we will know how better to pray for each other and in so doing we can obtain the promise of healing from this passage. Through this healing we find our hearts filled with the joy and love of Christ. Do not allow your blessing of this promise to be withheld because of your own pride or because you are afraid of allowing others to see the real you. Without the real you there is no transparency and without transparency there is no healing.