It has been years since one sentence has haunted me like this one.
I walked up to a young man and asked a simple question, “How are you?”
Maybe the surprise of my presence startled him, but it was his reply that shook me. Without missing a beat, he said, “You know how it is, you must fake it until you make it.” The words burnt into my mind, “Fake it until you make it.”
In my mind a fake is a fraud and a fraud is a lie. For three weeks I have struggled with this reality. We may be living in a world of frauds, people just faking it. Are people that are nice faking it? People that show concern, is it true concern or are they faking it?
You and I cannot change the world, but we must make sure that we are not fake.
As I drive my car, as I walk through the malls and as I lay quiet on my bed at night, I whisper this prayer, “God help me not to be a fake.” I don’t want to be a fake towards my wife, my precious children or to my church. As I smile and chat to the man at the petrol station or the lady at the till, I don’t want to be a fraud.
In a world of fakes you and I can make a difference just by being who God made us. This is who I am, not perfect, but I am real. The world will be a better place if all of us were real.
PS. The problem with faking it until we make it is, once we make it, we cannot stop faking it.
