Acting Like It

              Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God. (II Corinthians 7:1)

          I’ve read stories and encountered people who fall in love and struggle to become worthy or prove their worthiness to the one they love. Many women, in planning their weddings, want to pick out the perfect dress and lose weight so they look good in it. They plan to get their hair, nails, and makeup done. I suspect that the goal is – in part – to convince the groom that the bride is worthy of him. The problem is that within two years of that marriage, the honeymoon is over. Neither partner is making much effort to be worthy of the other and both know just how flawed the other is, even if they don’t know how flawed they are.

          That’s not the way it should be, but it’s the way it is. Oddly, I’ve noticed the opposite response in myself. When I meet someone, I tend to give a freak show. I present information made to convince them I’m not what they want in a friend. It’s not a conscious thing. Often, I walk away from the introduction before I realize how pathetic, or peculiar, or otherwise unsuitable I made myself sound. The idea seems to be that if I scare them off immediately, it won’t hurt as much as it will if we become friends before they decide they want nothing to do with me.

As an example, in the job I left in 2015, I spent many years introducing myself to new employees as “The Wicked Witch of the West.” And I was quite difficult to get along with. Eventually, they stopped believing me. It was sad because I worked hard at that reputation. (I’m not saying this is a good behavior on my part, just that it is – or was - a behavior.)

Of course, God doesn’t fall for our acts – either our protestations that we are magnificent creatures, and He should be impressed and grateful that we’ve chosen Him, or that we are monsters or worms and He would do best to avoid choosing us because we are bound to be His greatest disappointment. He knows that the truth is that both these extremes are truer than we know.

The point is, however, that if we think we love someone and want them to love us back, we tend to be on our best behavior. Once the relationship is official, we tend to lose interest in playing that game. But it is after we are in a relationship that we can and should truly begin to develop those characteristics we want them to believe we have. It is then that we need to work hardest at being or becoming pure. It is then that we must develop our character to match the reality of our situation, and not give up because being what we had been pretending to be is hard.