When you paint yourself head to toe in shiny silver metallic paint, put a swim cap on your head, some shades, board shorts, and a Hawaiian shirt, people tend to stare. While this isn’t technically about surfing, it is about being a surfer. I had the opportunity to attend San Diego Comic Con this weekend with my family, and I chose to dress as the long-forgotten and underappreciated cosmic-powered Silver Surfer. I carried no prop but a beach towel and often joked about how I had been on vacation since the last Silver Surfer movie from 2007, but I committed to the bit.
The bright silver paint I used to create the effect took almost two hours to apply (and I will have flecks of silver on me probably the rest of my life). It was an ordeal of minor to moderate proportions, but the reactions I received throughout Comic Con were priceless. People recognized me, and they wanted pictures with me. It was a very interesting experience, to be almost famous, at least within the small sphere of that event. It was also a bit disorienting, as a more general introvert, to be immediately recognized and seen. It can be very unsettling to realize that there is no way to hide in such a situation. Additionally, anything and everything I did was likely to be interpreted in light of my costume.
The experience was energizing, but it made me ponder a new question. What if everyone around you could instantly recognize that you were a Christian? What if there were no hiding it? What if being a Christian meant a corona of glory sent from the distant eternal future into our present to prove that you were chosen of the King? Pick whatever marker you like, but the idea that you might be laid bare before the whole world, outted as a Christian instantly and being unable to hide might raise strange concerns in you. If it does, beware. While there is no literal golden glow, or paint, or mark that demonstrates visibly our election into the kingdom of God, there are marks that are expected. If we begin to think instead about the Lord God as our audience, rather than imperfect man, it becomes even more unsettling.
Coram Deo, an oft used phrase of John Calvin which means “before the face of God” contains the idea that everything we do ought to be done in light of the absolute reality that we do so right in front of God’s face. We act, live, move, breathe, converse, exist in the direct and probing gaze of our holy and righteous creator. There is no getting around that. There is no escaping or hiding from such a gaze as His. Now, we might think that a terrifying thing, and in a sense we are correct. Yet, for those of us called according to His Grace, there should be joy in knowing that our father is watching, and a springing desire to please Him in all that we do. It is the longing of a child dancing for their daddy’s delight.
In both directions, dressing as the Silver Surfer made me consider things in a slightly different manner. How much of my life is oriented toward a fear of man, what they might think or do if they knew who I really was? How much of me am I hiding on a day-to-day from those around me, loved and unloved, known and unknown? More than that, how much of my life is lived in true, considered awareness that the Lord Almighty is watching, is present, is proud of the work His Son Jesus has completed and is completing? How much am I growing in the light of the Lord, in the beautiful knowledge that I do so Coram Deo? How about you?
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