The world of make-believe is essential when growing up; watching children play ‘let’s pretend’ reminds us of how role play can be crucial in our development. Dressing up, pretending to be doctors and nurses or teachers, is an integral part of learning how to fit into the real world. The imagination is not something which is only important in childhood; there is a place for it in all our lives.
As we grow older, however, there is a tendency for an unhealthy kind of pretence to fill our lives. We learn to be tactful, to be kind and considerate in our speech, and we learn that it’s better to think before we speak, which are all good things… but we also learn to hide our true feelings, to disguise our motivation and to cover over our sins with all kinds of rationalisation and justification. This kind of pretence is not helpful to spiritual growth, because it results in fragmented, disjointed lives.
God wants us to be whole. He wants our lives to be fully integrated, so that there is no dissonance between what we say and how we live. We need to practise what we preach. Hypocrisy is such a dangerous sin because it leads to play-acting, to be pretending to be something other than who we are. Jesus’s strongest words of condemnation were for the Pharisees (see Matt 23:1-39). He reminds us that we should not do things simply to be seen by others (Matt 6:1-18), but should do everything as unto the Lord (Col 3:17, Col 3:22). We have to be prepared to look at our motivation and ensure our behaviour matches our beliefs in every area of our lives.