Holiness
Even our beloved pets show their true colors when they believe no one who matters to them is looking. I’ve watched my dog gleefully chewing on items he knows wouldn’t be permissible chewing objects if he knew his master was in the room. But, since he believed he was alone, free of my watchful eye, he gnawed away, with no care for the eventual discovery of the evidence of the crime. He was lost in the moment, captivated by the pleasure of his sin. His suppressed guilt became apparent only after I made my presence known. The pup’s body language spoke volumes concerning his canine culpability. Just like we humans, man’s best friend suddenly acts righteously when he senses the master is watching.
In our case, we don’t just reserve external holiness for those times when we’re conscious of the Master’s presence. We also tend to act holy around those we want to impress with our relative spirituality. At church, we want our family on their best behavior, not how we behave around the house. We think twice about the movie we’re about to see when we run into a fellow parishioner at the theater, especially if it happens to be the pastor. And how do you think we feel?
Just in case you think this theory of holiness in the face of watchful eyes is exaggerated or made up, experiments done a few years ago yielded undeniable results showing our propensity to improve behavior when being watched. Here’s one of them:
How would your behavior change if you thought someone was watching you? A 2006 study at a university faculty lounge offered coffee and tea to professors that for years had used an unsupervised honor system. The rules were clear: serve yourself and then put the money you owed into a box. For ten weeks, though, the experimenters put a hard-to-miss poster near the box. One version of the poster featured pretty flowers; the other version had a pair of eyes glaring out at the viewer. The image alternated between flowers and eyes each week. People paid almost three times more on “eyes” weeks than on “flowers” weeks.
Matt Woodley, managing editor, PreachignToday.com; sources: Priceonomics blog, “How Honest Are You When No One Is Watching You?” (1-30-14)
A similar “watchful eye” experiment took place in an area known for a high rate of bicycle thefts. There was another sign with eyes placed there. It included this message: “Cycle thieves: we are watching you.” There were no surveillance cameras, just the sign. Thefts dropped by 62 percent over two years! One interesting side-effect of the experiment was that bicycle theft increased by the same percentage down the street from the usually high theft area. The thieves’ hearts weren’t changed, just their external behavior when they thought fake eyes were watching them!
As you’ve guessed by now, the difference is that God doesn’t look at the external, and His eyes see us everywhere! His primary interest is what’s on the inside. Yes, what you watch, eat, drink, etc., can affect what comes from within, but ultimately God is looking for pure hearts, reflected in outer actions. We can fool many people with outward holiness, man’s traditions, rituals, and religiosity, but we can’t fool God. Nobody’s perfect, but He still calls us to stop faking it and “be holy for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16).
“If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth” —1 John 1:6