Have you ever wrapped something up in a nice spiritual blanket to make it seem really nice? But you were really just using spiritual terms or concepts to express your idea to someone and make yourself look better.
These blankets come in many styles and shapes...
Small cover ups:
These blankets are the quick warmer-uppers, like when you tell someone you are praying for them, but you are just digging for more details. You’re covering up the real reason you are talking to them with a cover up - a small spiritual blanket.
Big comforters:
These huge blankets outline the larger issues in life, like when you tell someone that you would like to give them counsel about an issue in their life, but you’re really just expressing your personal opinion about what they are doing and how you don’t like it. This blanket covers your big issue by pretending to help another with theirs - makes me think of the mote in the eye story.
Frilly dress up blankets:
These fancy blankets put the spiritual cover on what you are actually doing. Often you will use Bible verses to express thoughts and pressure someone into looking good on the outside, but not really impacting their heart and life. You may look spiritual with this blanket, but you aren’t doing much good for yourself. These actually look nice, but they don’t truly have an impact.
Afghan blankets:
These are those strange blankets that don’t make any sense to me at all. They are mostly crocheted (my number one past-time in the Winter) and have huge holes in them (how effective a blanket is that?), like when you start into a doctrinal diatribe about a subject, but have the true doctrine completely mixed up. Some folks will talk to you about the end times and discuss how they know the time and date or who the real Devil is (I know a couple of folks I think might just fit the bill - you know who you are). When I was a teen we used to call one of my friends houses “Afghanistan” because there were probably 50 of these blankets in their house.
Lessons Learned: Don’t fake people out. If you care about them, then just care about them...don’t wrap it in a spiritual blanket for your benefit.
Thoughts: What style of blanket do you use for spiritual wrapping? That’s an ouch question, but it helps to self-examine. Do you have some other blanket examples you can share with us?
