HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

When Darkness Wears the Mask of Christianity

I once spent hours praying with a man who was deeply troubled by oppressive thoughts, particularly in the middle of the night. We sought the Lord together, and eventually I sensed that we had reached a breakthrough. Afterwards, as we talked, he said something that stopped me: “Much demonic activity hides behind the cross.” I asked him what he meant. He explained that evil can operate beneath the appearance of Christianity, including self-righteousness masquerading as righteousness in the name of Jesus. His words have stayed with me because they demand that I examine my own heart.

I understood his statement as a picture of darkness hiding behind religious appearances. The cross itself is Christ’s victory over evil; it gives darkness no protection. Yet people can use the language of the cross to conceal attitudes that contradict the One who died upon it. We can speak about Jesus while resisting His correction. We can defend Christian truth while despising those we are called to love. We can wear the symbols of surrender while fiercely guarding our independence. That possibility troubles me more than the darkness that openly announces itself.

I know how to recognize certain expressions of evil. I spent years as an RCMP officer confronting violence, deception, and human brokenness. But ministry has taught me that darkness can also speak softly, quote Scripture, and claim spiritual authority. Pride can wear a minister’s clothing. Manipulation can call itself covering. Bitterness can present itself as discernment. Ambition can announce that it is building the Kingdom. When these things remain unchallenged, people learn to mistake religious confidence for spiritual maturity. I refuse to accept that confusion as normal Christianity.

Before I point at anyone else, I must allow the Holy Spirit to point at me. I can preach this message with passion and still protect the very condition I am exposing. I can become proud of recognizing pride. I can congratulate myself for seeing through other people while refusing to acknowledge my own mixed motives. The first responsibility of a prophetic voice is submission to the truth it proclaims. If I want God to uncover what is hidden in His Church, I must give Him access to what is hidden in Peter Nash.

One question burns within me: why do we sometimes withdraw from people who expose their darkness, yet embrace people who keep the same darkness concealed? Someone admits a struggle, and immediately we become suspicious. Another person maintains a polished appearance, and we place them on a platform. We may reward concealment while punishing honesty. Then we wonder why people hide. Have we created communities where confession leads to restoration, or communities where confession threatens a person’s entire place among us? A church that humiliates the repentant teaches the unrepentant to become better actors.

I am not suggesting that every confession proves repentance or that trust should be restored immediately. Love requires truth, accountability, and protection for those who have been harmed. A leader who has abused people cannot demand access to leadership simply because he has admitted wrongdoing. Forgiveness does not erase consequences. But I must distinguish responsible boundaries from self-righteous rejection. Galatians 6:1 calls spiritual believers to restore someone caught in a transgression with gentleness, while watching themselves. Restoration requires humility because I also need the grace I am extending.

Jesus confronted people who trusted in their own righteousness and treated others with contempt. In Luke 18, the Pharisee could describe his religious accomplishments, but his prayer exposed his heart. He thanked God that he was unlike other people. The tax collector asked for mercy. Jesus said that the latter went home justified. That passage makes me tremble. It is possible to address God while using prayer to admire myself. It is possible to thank Him with my mouth while withholding mercy from someone He is inviting to repent.

Self-righteousness feeds on comparison. It needs someone beneath me so that I can feel secure above them. God’s righteousness brings me to Christ, where boasting loses its foundation. Philippians 3:9 directs me away from a righteousness of my own toward the righteousness that comes through faith in Christ. From that place, obedience grows through dependence upon Him. I cannot purchase acceptance by becoming impressive. Neither can I demonstrate holiness by becoming cruel. The closer I walk with Jesus, the less freedom I have to despise people for needing His mercy.

This is where darkness can hide in plain sight: in the distance between the Christ I proclaim and the character I permit. I may teach forgiveness while nurturing resentment. I may preach generosity while using people for personal advantage. I may call for unity while insisting that everyone revolve around me. I may condemn sexual sin while excusing envy, greed, or contempt. Jesus exposed outward religious beauty concealing inward corruption in Matthew 23. His words challenge me to examine the private life beneath my public testimony.

I must also be careful about what I call darkness. An unwanted thought does not automatically reveal agreement with evil. Trauma is not a secret sin. A person struggling through the night should receive compassion, careful listening, prayer, and appropriate help. I cannot determine the cause of suffering simply because it feels spiritually intense. Discernment requires humility. The wounded need shepherds who will walk with them, not accusations that make them more afraid. If my ministry increases shame while ignoring their suffering, I need to examine what I am calling spiritual authority.

At a recent Roma church gathering, I looked across the people and saw wounds, burdens, and the weight of painful experiences. I also saw hunger. I saw people longing to become like Christ. I cannot reduce them to their struggles or look at them through the superiority of someone who imagines he has arrived. They bear God’s image. Their hunger deserves patient care. As I watched them, I felt again how desperately we need the Holy Spirit to work among us, healing hearts and forming the character of Jesus.

I want that work to begin in the places we have learned to protect. Some things remain hidden because we fear rejection. Other things remain hidden because we still enjoy them. I must be honest about both. Fear may explain my concealment, but it cannot become a permanent excuse for refusing help. Enjoyment may expose how divided my heart has become. If I repeatedly defend what Christ is asking me to surrender, I am choosing a captivity that I may still describe as freedom. That contradiction cannot produce lasting peace.

Genesis 3 reveals how desire becomes destructive when we pursue it through distrust and disobedience. Desire itself is not humanity’s sin; God created us with the capacity to hunger, love, and delight. But Adam and Eve reached for what God had forbidden, accepting a distorted picture of His goodness. Then they hid. I recognize that pattern whenever I decide that obedience will deprive me of something essential. I begin negotiating with the truth. I become selective about what I hear. Eventually, concealment seems necessary to preserve the choice I have made.

The things I continually conceal can become places where temptation and accusation gain influence. Ephesians 4:27 warns believers against giving the devil an opportunity, within a passage addressing anger and our conduct. I cannot demand freedom while deliberately preserving bitterness, dishonesty, or compromise. Yet the answer is never an endless search for demons behind every difficulty. I am called to submit to God and resist the devil, as James 4:7 teaches. Submission includes concrete obedience: telling the truth, making restitution, seeking help, and refusing the sin I once defended.

As a police officer, I knew that discovering the truth could take hours. Sometimes people withheld it because they feared consequences. Sometimes they offered enough information to appear cooperative while protecting what mattered most. I have seen similar patterns in spiritual conversations. We may reveal a manageable weakness while guarding the deeper issue. We may explain our history at length without accepting responsibility for our present choices. I understand that fear, but healing requires honesty. Those helping me cannot respond wisely to circumstances I continually misrepresent or refuse to disclose.

There is a crucial difference, however, between investigating an offence and shepherding a soul. I must never turn ministry into an interrogation or force someone to surrender intimate details to prove their sincerity. God already knows the truth. A wise pastor respects dignity, confidentiality, and the pace at which trust develops. Confession should be offered to trustworthy people equipped to help, rather than broadcast to satisfy public curiosity. Walking in the light does not require making every wound public. It requires ending the deception and receiving the help necessary to change.

Jesus taught in John 8:31–32 that those who abide in His word are truly His disciples, and that knowing the truth brings freedom. I cannot separate that promise from abiding. Freedom grows as I remain under His teaching and let it govern my life. Hearing an uncomfortable fact may begin the process, but obedience carries it forward. I want more than the relief of a powerful prayer meeting. I want the freedom that continues when I return home, face temptation, and choose to walk according to what Jesus has said.

Often we run from truth because we expect punishment before we expect mercy. Yet in Christ I find a welcome that makes repentance possible. First John 1:9 connects confession with God’s faithfulness to forgive and cleanse. Romans 8:1 declares freedom from condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. These promises give me courage to stop pretending. The Father does not need my performance to discover my condition. He knows me completely. I can come honestly, trusting His mercy while allowing Him to address what is harming me and others.

His acceptance does not make sin harmless. His love leads me toward freedom from it. I cannot use grace to excuse the very captivity from which Jesus came to deliver me. Titus 2 describes grace as teaching us to renounce ungodliness and live upright lives. If my understanding of grace leaves me increasingly comfortable with deception, I have misunderstood its purpose. I want the grace that strengthens my obedience, corrects my desires, and teaches me to love. The cross reveals how seriously God takes sin and how profoundly He loves sinners.

Everything concealed is already visible to God. Hebrews 4:13 tells me that nothing in creation is hidden from His sight. Ecclesiastes 12:14 speaks of God bringing every deed into judgment, including hidden things. I cannot assume that every secret will become public during this life, but I can be certain that no religious reputation will make God overlook the truth. That certainty calls me to repentance today. Why would I defend before people what I cannot defend before Christ? Why spend my life preserving an appearance that eternity will expose?

The warning of Matthew 7:21–23 searches me deeply. Jesus speaks of people who appeal to prophecy, deliverance, and mighty works performed in His name, yet hear that He never knew them. Spiritual activity cannot substitute for doing the Father’s will. I cannot build my assurance upon impressive ministry experiences while refusing the Lord’s authority over my character. This warning should lead me toward faithful fellowship with Jesus. I want to know Him, obey Him, and let the reality of that relationship shape the way I treat people.

That is why I return to Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1:17–19. He asks that believers receive the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God, with the eyes of their hearts enlightened to grasp their hope, inheritance, and the greatness of His power toward them. I need that illumination. I need to see Jesus clearly enough that my excuses lose their appeal. I need to recognize the inheritance He has given me, so I stop living as though concealment protects something more valuable than fellowship with Him.

My deepest hunger is to know Him. I want to stir my soul toward real breakthrough, even when breakthrough begins with an unwelcome correction. Lord, interrupt the conversation in which I am subtly promoting myself. Expose the resentment hiding beneath my explanation. Show me when I have confused control with responsibility or intensity with love. Teach me to receive correction without constructing a defence around every weakness. I want the Holy Spirit to make me teachable, because an unteachable minister can damage people while believing he is protecting God’s work.

I also need to test the words I use to justify myself. When I say that God told me something, am I willing to have it weighed? When I call criticism persecution, have I considered whether someone is telling me the truth? When I insist that others honour my calling, am I honouring their dignity? Spiritual language must never become a locked door that prevents examination. First Thessalonians 5:21 calls us to test everything and hold fast what is good. A claim of revelation does not remove my responsibility to listen, examine, and repent.

I feel an urgency about this because people are being hurt behind doors bearing the name of Jesus. We cannot answer their pain with another impressive service while leaving the source of harm untouched. If repentance costs me status, let it cost me status. If truth interrupts my plans, let my plans be interrupted. If protecting the vulnerable requires confronting someone influential, influence must yield to righteousness. I want the courage to act upon the truth I preach, even when obedience costs me dearly.

An apostolic burden must include forming Christ in people, as Paul expresses in Galatians 4:19. I cannot be satisfied because someone attends meetings, adopts our vocabulary, or becomes loyal to my ministry. Are they growing in truthfulness? Are they becoming patient, merciful, and willing to repent? Can they disagree without hatred? Can they serve without demanding recognition? I must ask the same questions of myself. The fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 gives me a far more searching measure of maturity than the excitement surrounding a public manifestation.

Romans 8:29 describes Jesus as the firstborn among many brothers and sisters, with believers being conformed to His image. Sonship carries the calling to resemble Him. I must therefore ask a question that reaches beyond my titles and testimony: do I look like Jesus in the way I live? When someone disappoints me, what appears? When my authority is challenged, what rises? When nobody applauds, what remains? Transformation is possible through the Spirit’s work. I must cooperate with that work instead of treating my present character as an unavoidable limitation.

Loving difficult people tests whether this teaching has entered my life. Jesus commands love for enemies; He does not permit contempt for those whose wounds make relationships complicated. Love can establish boundaries and confront harmful behaviour, but it cannot celebrate another person’s humiliation. When I care for someone who struggles, I acknowledge our shared need for mercy. I remember the patience God has shown me. If I demand compassion for my history while withholding it from someone else, self-righteousness is already speaking through the mouth I use to preach grace.

I believe the Church must become courageous enough to welcome truth and humble enough to receive correction. Let our prayer meetings produce honest living. Let our preaching establish accountable leadership. Let our love make room for confession, and let our wisdom protect those who are vulnerable. I will not measure revival only by what happens at the altar. I want to see what happens in homes, financial decisions, private conversations, and broken relationships. A move of the Holy Spirit should reach the places where we have learned to maintain appearances.

Today I place this challenge before my own heart and before yours. What am I protecting? What do I rename so that I can continue practising it? Whose confession have I judged while excusing my concealment? Lord Jesus, bring Your light into every room I have closed to You. Give me courage to repent, humility to seek help, and love to restore others wisely. Let the victory of Your cross become visible in my conduct. I want a life in which truth is welcome, mercy is practised, and Your character is taking shape.

Peter Nash