When I feel that who I am is not enough…why, naturally, I must pretend to be someone that I am not…because by carefully doing all that I can to control others’ perceptions of reality, I can determine my own reality…yes? Or perhaps…no.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the past two weeks—about the underlying insecurity from which such ideology springs, and about the ways that we perpetuate and encourage this kind of reasoning in our culture.

Even within the church—or maybe especially within the church—it seems to me that perhaps we’ve fallen prey to the world of facades, where the pretense of sophistication and the appearance of wealth and the social standing of our friends are more important to us than the real, vibrant, messy, relational (and sometimes ugly) existence to which we’ve been called.

See, here’s the thing: Christ didn’t come to rescue the person we pretend to be. He actually came to rescue and redeem the person that we ARE.

What I sometimes wonder is if the façade—the pretense of having it all together, or the putting on of airs in order to feel that one is high-class, or the unending and unfulfilling search for respect and popularity that dictates the life-course of many individuals…is this an attempt to hide from ourselves the reality of who we truly are? Are we claiming to find our significance—our worth, our sense of purpose and meaning—in Christ…and yet frantically searching in the meantime to find it elsewhere?

With each passing year, the more firmly I am convinced that there is very little that we can do, say, or train ourselves to think, that can disguise what Francis Schaeffer refers to as the “mannishness” of man. There is an earthy mortality and futility to the way that the human race is naturally inclined to think, perceive, and reason about his world, his fellows, and his God. And it is this earthy mortality which we try to disguise by dressing it in any number of colorful paper hats—success, beauty, lively personality, conversational skills, social finesse. It’s not that these things are pointless. But they are not the point in and of themselves, and I think that too often, we take the means to the end and we put it in the place of the goal itself.

Last week, I was conversing with someone and as I did so, found myself realizing in the back of my mind that I find this person very intimidating. And then I started asking myself why…and I realized that it was because I feel like I don’t measure up when I compare myself to this particular individual. Sometimes you meet someone who’s got you beat in every area: they’re smarter, better looking, more articulate, more educated, can think faster, dress better, and have more money than you do. Oh, and they probably can trace their family tree back to Adam and Eve and happen to be related to every major famous person that one possibly could be, and yes, they are very, very much aware of the fact that they themselves are the embodiment of all of the best and most noble character traits of each and every one of those famous relatives, to be sure. Ok, so maybe not quite. But sometimes it feels like that, and sometimes…I allow that to intimidate me.

Why? Because…I can’t claim any of that. I grew up on a farm, milking dairy goats, feeding chickens, trapping mice, falling out of trees, and getting bucked off of horses. Most of my ideas about relationships, family, and the importance of values come from things I learned from my mom and dad, my five siblings, and my tiny church family. I shop at WalMart, and I absolutely hate having to pay more than $30 for a pair of jeans…or any other article of clothing, for that matter. I am not above eating at McDonalds. I don’t know the names of half of the fancy food items on the menu in an upscale restaurant, and it doesn’t bother me to admit that I don’t know.

I often times feel that those who try hardest to come across as sophisticated, intelligent, high-class, and elite are actually the most insecure, the least “real,” and the most guarded people out there—which isn’t really that attractive if you think about it. Although sometimes, despite the fact that it’s not attractive, it apparently is…still intimidating? I know. Makes no sense to me either.

But in thinking about the whole thing a little this past week, one of the thoughts that popped into my head was that ultimately, we feel intimidated only when we lose sight of the fact that our worth isn’t found in our pocketbook, our manners, our friends, our popularity, or our family tree—it’s rooted and grounded in Christ, who has redeemed us and called us His own.

And the thing that should always impress us more than anything else in the world is someone whose beautiful, genuine, real heart and honest adoration for God and love for people shines through in their countenance, their words, their actions, and their lives—this is truly impressive. There will always be people with brilliant, shiny exteriors—but if the heart doesn’t match that shiny exterior, we often find that these same individuals are shockingly empty on the inside. And life was not meant to be lived by hollow people.

We are saved by grace, made loveable only because of His mercy, forgiven because out of the depths of His compassion He felt pity on the brokenness of our souls and reached down to intervene on our behalf. And that should change our hearts…and our thinking. Which will eventually change our countenances, control our actions, and alter the course of our existences…but probably will never give us a family tree containing all of the most illustrious individuals ever to grace the human race with their presence on planet earth. Why? Oh, because…that doesn’t actually matter. Yeah. Pretty much not.