Books

Discarding Our Masks

In True Faced, readers learn to strip off their masks.

TRUE FACED: Trust God and Others with Who You Really Are
TRUE FACED: Trust God and Others with Who You Really Are
TRUE FACED:Trust God and Otherswith Who YouReally Are Bill Thrall, Bruce McNicol, and John Lynch NavPress, 224 pp., $19.99

“God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another” is the William Shakespeare epigram on this book’s dust jacket. It beautifully summarizes our fear of authenticity. How do we drop the masks we’ve crafted for ourselves and become who God has made us to be?

“The time has come for those of us who say we are ‘doin’ just fine’ to acknowledge the truth: We are not fine, not fine at all,” the authors write.

They are all involved in Leadership Catalyst, “an international resource for helping leaders learn how to develop relationships of trust and environments of grace.” As they write with one voice about the root causes of why we wear masks, they also show how we can strip them off. Masks, they believe, are often the result of our guilt or our hurt over something done to us. In order to become “truefaced,” we must resolve our shame and anger. We must also release ourselves from the bondage of performance, and the belief that we can resolve our sin ourselves. True authenticity comes when we trust God and live in his love and grace.

This is a quick but meaty read with life-changing potential.

Copyright © 2004 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Also posted today is an excerpt from the book.

True Faced is available from Amazon.com and other book retailers.

More information is available from the publisher.

Other leadership books are available from the Leadership Catalyst web site.

Also in this issue

The Passion of Mel Gibson: Why Evangelicals are Cheering a 'Catholic' Film

Cover Story

The Passion of Mel Gibson

Network for the Alienated

Douglas LeBlanc

Border Crackdown

Timothy R. Callahan in Washington, with 'CT' staff reports

Cry, the Beloved Continent

Discarding Our Masks

Reviewed by Cindy Crosby

Editorial

Forget Your Bliss

A Christianity Today Editorial

Incarnate Forever

J.I. Packer

Inside <em>CT</em>: Coming Attractions

Islamic Board Gets Green Light

Carol Lowes in Toronto

Misfires in the Tolerance Wars

Black Theology Revisited

Reviewed by F. Burton Nelson

Quake Opens Door to Gospel

John W. Kennedy

News

Quotation Marks

Jesus' Cross

Compiled by Richard A. Kauffman

Relationships, Not Programs

Reviewed by Cindy Crosby

The Good News of God's Wrath

Peter Jensen

Vacation Bible School Wars

Ken Walker

Worship Style Matters

Reviewed by Cindy Crosby

A Home for Nomads

Reviewed by Cindy Crosby

News

Multi(per)plexed

By Marshall Allen

News

Go Figure

News

Passages

By CT Staff

The Fountain Fill'd wth Blood

Chris Armstrong

A Law that Shouldn't be Cloned

Mark Stricherz

Hindu Extremes

Joshua Newton

Q & A: Franklin Graham

News

Challenging Canyon Orthodoxy

The Passion of Mel Gibson

The Passion and Prejudice

Michael Medved

How the Late Carl Henry Helped Invent Evangelicalism

Burma's Almost Forgotten

Benedict Rogers

A Politics of Gratitude

Editorial

A Question of Faith

A Christianity Today Editorial

America's Pastor

Cindy Crosby

An Unusual Church of Christ

Cindy Crosby

View issue

Our Latest

The Russell Moore Show

Jon Meacham on the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union

The American experiment has never been about achieving perfection.

A Sign, Not a Weathervane

CT sought to point people to the Bible through the personal and public crises of 1978.

News

War Drove Her Out. Now She’s Planting a Church.

Cody Benjamin

Displaced from Ukraine, a young immigrant found safety—and mission—in small-town Minnesota.

Low-Tech Parenting Must Be a Big Tent

If we want to parent wisely in a digital age, we must pair courage with grace—not judgmentalism.

Friction-Maxxing Higher Ed

Kristin VanEyk and Elisabeth E. Lefebvre

Christian colleges can offer complexity and real challenges instead of pat answers and easy degrees.

‘No Guardrails’ for Some Christian Wellness Influencers

Supplements and other wellness products do big business on social media, and even Scripture can be turned into marketing language.

The Bulletin

War Projections, 2028 Hopefuls, AI Novels, and Men’s College Attendance

Mike Cosper, Clarissa Moll

Trump predicts end of war, presidential candidates emerge, publisher detects AI-generated novel, and men think twice about college.

Review

We Aren’t Just Disenchanted. We Are Desecrated.

Danielle Treweek

Carl Trueman’s latest work tackles Western society’s theological ailments—but could offer a stronger Christian remedy.

Apple PodcastsDown ArrowDown ArrowDown Arrowarrow_left_altLeft ArrowLeft ArrowRight ArrowRight ArrowRight Arrowarrow_up_altUp ArrowUp ArrowAvailable at Amazoncaret-downCloseCloseEmailEmailExpandExpandExternalExternalFacebookfacebook-squareGiftGiftGooglegoogleGoogle KeephamburgerInstagraminstagram-squareLinkLinklinkedin-squareListenListenListenChristianity TodayCT Creative Studio Logologo_orgMegaphoneMenuMenupausePinterestPlayPlayPocketPodcastprintRSSRSSSaveSaveSaveSearchSearchsearchSpotifyStitcherTelegramTable of ContentsTable of Contentstwitter-squareWhatsAppXYouTubeYouTube