In the Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning puts it like this “In Christ Jesus freedom from fear empowers us to let go of the desire to appear good, so that we can move freely in the mystery of who we really are. Preoccupation with projecting the “nice guy” image, impressing newcomers with our experience, and relying heavily on the regard of others leads to self-consciousness, sickly pedestal behaviour, and the unfreedom in the iron grip of human respect”