You Can Fake It All

[MissBrattified]

To the thread: Yes, you can fake love for God, salvation and Christianity. People do it all the time and have since the beginning. Growing up in church, I've observed fakers and I've even been the faker from time to time. All you have to do is follow the rules and act like everyone else during service. Sometimes people fake for their own reasons/benefit and sometimes they fake because of peer pressure or pressure from authorities. Sometimes people are bullied into faking, IMO.

However, it really isn't our job to separate the tares from the wheat, and eventually the fakes will either be naturally separated (chaff blown away) or their differences will become visible. There's no need to uproot the fakers; there's only a need to examine ourselves and make sure we aren't guilty of being fake.

And then there are the Sunday mornings when we get up late, nothing goes right, Jeff and I argue on the way to church, and I have to walk in and pretend like nothing's wrong--for the sake of everyone else. That kind of "faking" has merit, because it's simply being considerate. We don't have to always share every negative feeling we're having, and God doesn't need to be punished with a lack of praise and devotion just because we're having a bad day. Trust me, though, when it's just Him and me? I know He knows but I share all my negative feelings anyway. No need to hide from God, but sometimes we do [feel the] need to hide from people. I guess that's our culture, both church and secular, or maybe it's personality. I don't like to open up my "mess" for all the world to see. I don't particularly care for making myself vulnerable, quite frankly. I trust only God with everything, and a very small handful of people with a carefully selected slice of that same "everything."