Growing up we played a game that at a variety of times went by different names. The two most common of the names for this game were: play-like, and pretend. We made ourselves out to be the real thing and pretended all the things we knew about the situation of that person, or those people.

One of my favorites was to play cowboys and Indians. Some of us would put on our paper cowboy hats and grab our trusty bent stick that allowed for a good grip when pointing at the bad guys. With a “bang” and a “pop” we would have a real live pretend shoot ‘em up in our back yard. Others would take a long stick, tie a string on it, and aiming another stick, pull on the string until “twang” the arrow flew so that we could rid the land of the dreaded cowboys who had invaded our land. We loved to tie a band around our head and insert a feather into it to show how brave we were. It mattered not that it was a crow feather, we were real live pretend Indians . . . straight out of the wild west.

These days I’ve noticed that there are a lot of people still playing pretend. They put up the front of knowing Christ, doing and saying all the right things. We are so good at the game of play-like that we pretend our way to church, convincing ourselves that we are doing God a favor simply by calling ourselves by His name. We have become so adept at playing pretend that we have developed entire churches and church societies that bear only the slightest resemblance to the real thing. We make ourselves out to be the real thing and pretend all the things we know about the kingdom that is church.

We are not really serious about being church or even being Christlike. Instead we settle for being pretend believers in a pretend church pretending our way right into the broad way that leads to destruction and Hell. Sadly, because we are so busy pretending to be real that we never become real and those around us never know reality but only pretend.

It is time to stop pretending and become real.