A person seems to have two personas within. Commonly, we do not know how to deal with that. We tend to handle the matter clumsily, especially as we evaluate others. We can accept the persona differences in ourselves better than we can in others. Many persons meld personas well. What you see is what you get. There is no hypocrisy, great mystery, or doubt about identity. One may not like the outcome for either the private or public persona for an open individual. At least one senses wholeness in ethical openness. Persons may be negative, even evil, in both private and public personas. Some have negative private persona, but affirmative public – as Absalom demonstrated. Absalom, almost irresistible in public, was ugly in his private life of excess and disloyalty. Others, negative in public perception, were virtuous in private.
There are gradations in both negative and affirmative directions. We are not here greatly concerned about the reality of the persona problem in the general culture, but what it means in the Christian context. (Memories of President Richard Nixon tend to be negative based primarily on his private persona.) In reviewing the biographies of Christian leaders in history one is impressed how prejudiced have been some secularists and religionists, in reporting the lives and influences of many devout leaders. Jonathan Edwards is sometimes seen in his public persona as a stern, even unfeeling and harsh Calvinist, sending listeners to heaven or hell. Guests and strangers who wrote about visiting, even living, with the Edwards family, informed their readers about the greatness, the remarkable influence for good and faith that they experienced in their personal contact with Edwards. One visitor wrote: Certainly this is a great man. Records of his impact on American life and Church make him a leading representative of colonial American idealism.
John Winthrop, sometimes noted as one of the forgotten founding fathers of the nation, was reported to be stern and dour with rigidity and a sense of moral superiority in dealing with others. Privately he was known to be friendly, even lively. He wrote about passion for God and God’s way in the vein of the Song of Solomon with descriptions that edged on erotic thought – as Solomon did. Winthrop’s sermon, Model, was one of the great sermons of history. One critic called it, the greatest sermon of the past thousand years. Winthrop, Edwards and others deserve better reporting for proper balance. The Christian pilgrims made monumental contributions.
Herod was ugly as a king, and as a man. Gandhi was a great public figure, but lacking as a father and husband. One day I met an actor who expressed his Christian faith and concerns at a conference held at the College I served. It took some adjustment for me in that he was commonly seen on television and films playing the lowest type of violent, scurvy person one might imagine. His public persona was so strong in the negative that I had difficulty accepting his Christian persona. David the king struggled through the hypocrisy of both his private and public persona. There are hypocrisies healed by confession and abandonment of the self-oriented persona. We all need recovery. There is victory in the healing of the whole person, best accomplished in a spiritual perception of God and man. Wholeness of person is a goal here. That is accomplished by forgiveness, righteousness, and sanctification for Christian integrity. Christianity is not only a matter for right thinking about man and nature in daily life as interpreted by many secularists, but a factor vital for the understanding of both human and divine context, found in a careful exposition of Biblical concepts, and practical application. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020