02/12/2025
Subtle Diversions From Our True Condition: A Markan Reflection
One of the most painful effects of sin is how it turns us into pretenders, great pretenders. We learn to hide. We learn to project. We learn to manage impressions so that no one sees the inner places where fear, confusion, and insecurity live. And this temptation does not disappear when we become Christians. Even the disciples, even those closest to Jesus can become experts in hiding their true condition.
The Gospel of Accdg to Mark shows this uncomfortable truth. Peter, James, and John (Jesus' inner circle) are not spared from this tendency. Peter has just been rebuked for resisting Jesus' revelation of His coming death in Mark 8. In Mark 9, right after witnessing the frightening glory of the Transfiguration, the disciples hear Jesus speak again of "rising from the dead." Mark tells us they "kept the matter to themselves," choosing to whisper among each other rather than bring their questions to Jesus.
And when they finally speak? The question they ask is not the one troubling their hearts.
Instead of wrestling with the terrifying reality that their Master will suffer and die, they ask about Elijah and the scribes. A safe question, a theological question, a question that sounds spiritual but avoids the heart of the matter (Mk 7).
You see, Mark exposes a familiar human pattern: when the truth is too painful, we hide behind the abstracts. When fear surfaces, we shield ourselves with knowledge, discussion, activity, anything except the issue of the heart. It is not ignorance that blinds the disciples, but fear. If their Master dies, their dreams collapse. So they divert the conversation. They project competence, "come on Jesus, try us, why not have a conversation on Old Testament theology." They avoid the truth.
But Jesus refuses to let them run away. He brings them back to the necessity of His suffering. He names the fear they cannot name (9:12-13). He does not let them continue their projections. And this is grace. Jesus, in love, leads them toward truth, not to shame them, but to free them.
We are not so different.
In the corporate world, people hide emptiness by burying themselves in credentials, achievements, busyness, and social media performance. As long as the calendar is full, they feel important. As long as people notice them, they feel alive. But beneath those activity lies a fear of being exposed! What if I slow down and discover I feel nothing? What if everything I built can be taken away? What if death empties all of this?
In the church, we have our own versions. Some hide behind ministry that is movement, noise, activity that makes us look useful to God. Others hide behind orthodoxy, endless quotations, debates, theological sharpness that can mask spiritual dryness. But I know people, seminary students, broken enough to admit that while their minds oozing with Scripture, their hearts are dry.
These are subtle diversions, ways of avoiding our true condition, ways of turning away from the transforming presence of Jesus the Messiah. And when we do not stop, when we keep performing, when we keep projecting, the deep work of God in our hearts becomes distant. Transformation becomes difficult, joy becomes shallow, and intimacy with God becomes a memory of the past rather than a reality in the present.
To grow, we must do what the disciples could not yet do (9:10-11): bring our real questions, our real fears, our real emptiness to Jesus. Not to hide behind theology and not to distract ourselves with religious activity, but to be still, honest, vulnerable before the One who already knows.
Unlike the world, Jesus does not shame our weakness, He names it, He heals it, and He invites us to drop our projections so that we can finally become real before Him, and in becoming real, we become whole in Him.
