The Reader

I was watching The Reader and the character of Ralph Fiennes was someone that I found an interesting study. He was a very young teenager (I think 15) when he had an intense love affair for a summer with a woman who was around 35. He never could tell anyone about this relationship and that resulted in him being very closed and not even allowing himself to open up to the women that he got married to or physically close with. I could see how this secret and the fear of being found out made him put on a false front.
Then our pastor was talking about how fear will produce hypocrisy and I can really see the connection. Hypocrisy is like being an actor on the old Greek stage where they used masks on sticks and held them up to their face. This play-acting, this 'putting on a face' is hypocrisy. The fear can be a multitude of things and not just the fear of discovery. The fear can be what people may think, how I might be judged, the fear that noone will understand and there will be no compassion or unconditional love.

I take a step into the light
And quickly back away.
To be exposed would cost so much
Its a price I cannot pay.

There was a time of utter joy
Of love and sweet caress
Its left a bird inside my heart
And there 't will always nest.

I seek to find my life's content
A peace within without
There comes no such benevolence
And this is just another bout.

Others want so much more of me
They chase me with their claws
Wanting to draw my own life's blood
And pour it in their maws.

I know they seek to hurt me not
I give them only silence in return
It is my story and mine alone
To reveal it I would burn.

So...these folk who seem to be hypocrites, do we have the right to try and force them out into the open? To criticize them? To label and demoralize them? I think we ought to be more patient and understanding. Some people are born into sensible families but others have to fight to survive and everyone has a story and we sometimes need to let that story unfold the way it is supposed to. In the time that they need to work it out.