MAYBE YOU’VE LIVED a completely sheltered life in which nothing is expected of you. Or maybe you’re so incredibly gifted that everything comes easily to you. But if not, then at some point, like the rest of us, you’ve found yourself in a situation in which you had a job to do or a role to perform, but felt like you didn’t know what the heck you were doing.

Sound familiar? What was the situation? How anxious were you? How did you handle it?

A lot depends here on how much pressure there is to perform well, to get it “right,” right away. Much of that pressure, of course, comes from the outside. Other people have expectations of us, some fair and reasonable, and some not so much. And depending on the task at hand, our mistakes can have real-world consequences. Surgeons and line cooks, for example, are both under a lot of pressure, but much more rides on the surgeon’s competence.

We also have expectations of ourselves. Everyone wants to do well, and some of us need to do well. We can be harsher with ourselves than the most demanding of bosses. Anything less than near-perfection may feel like failure, regardless of what anyone else might say. And failure in what we do may feel like failure as a person, as a worthwhile human being who has a legitimate place on this planet.

Moreover, it can be hard to disentangle the critical voices coming from the outside from the ones coming from the inside. When we expect a certain reaction from others, that’s what we see; we may only notice the behaviors that confirm what we fear.

So, what do we do?

THESE DAYS, THE mainstream advice is to “fake it till you make it.” People take the saying in different ways. Some take it for granted as a fact of life. Of course you have to do things you don’t know how to do. Who doesn’t? Of course you have to pretend to be more confident and competent than you feel. But sooner or later, you get there.

I suspect, though, that this is easier for people who don’t expect to “do what they love” or find personal fulfillment in what they do. For them, work isn’t a form of personal expression, it’s a means to practical ends like groceries and rent. They may have external critics at work, but the internal critic doesn’t feel the same need to pile on.

When we expect what we do to be an expression of who we are, however, “faking it” seems inauthentic. If there are a lot of external expectations on us, we may feel like we’re always walking around with a mask in place, not daring to let others know what’s really going on inside us. And the longer we have to fake it, especially when we feel we’re not “making it,” the more likely it is that the internal critic will jump in. We doubt ourselves and question our identity: Is this really me? If not, who am I?

And it can be this way in the Christian life, where it’s not enough to just fake it.

IN THE PREVIOUS post, in response to the oracle in Micah 6, I raised the question of behavior versus character. The people of Judah stood condemned before God. They were willing to do whatever God required of them in terms of outward shows of religious behavior, but were lacking in the kind of personal character God wanted from his people.

So what about us? Do we walk humbly with God? Are we people of justice and fairness in all our relationships? Do we actually love mercy? Are we people of patience, forgiveness, and compassion? And if we don’t think we are, what do we do? Fake it till we make it?

Well…yes and no. (You probably expected me to say that.)

Here’s the “yes” side of it. While there are cases of miraculous transformations of character, for most of us becoming more and more like Christ is a never-ending journey of growth, akin to what Friedrich Nietzsche (in a very different context) once called “a long obedience in the same direction.” Character is built over a lifetime of decisions and behaviors.

At first, it may feel like faking it. We pray, but don’t really know what to say, don’t know if we’re “getting it right.” We read our Bibles because we’re supposed to, even if we don’t feel like it, even if we don’t understand what we’re reading. We try to forgive someone who’s offended us, though every fiber of our being wants to retaliate or run away.

To cite what’s known as virtue theory, we need to commit to such behaviors so that they become habits. Over time, habits become dispositions: we actually want to pray or read Scripture, or we lean toward forgiveness in a way that we didn’t before. Over time, these dispositions develop into a more settled character. They become who we are. That’s not to say we always act accordingly. But when we do, it feels authentic.

In this sense then, we can fake it till we make it, and this is normal. We act more like Christ to become more like Christ.

BUT HERE’S THE “no.” As the oracle from Micah suggests — and I imagine our own experience would confirm — it’s possible to keep faking it without making it. That’s because there are different motivations for faking it: to keep up appearances, to dodge criticism or disapproval, to fit in.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying, for example, that it’s a bad thing to want to fit in. But I am saying that this in itself is not the motivation we need to grow in character.

Think about it. Why, when God gives his people the Ten Commandments, does he start by reminding them of the exodus from Egypt? Why, when God has Micah bring a covenant lawsuit, does he ask them to remember his favor toward them not only in the exodus, but in their crossing of the Jordan into the Promised Land?

Because he wants them to be motivated by those memories, by their recognition of who God has been to them in the whole history of their covenant relationship. And when Micah tells them that God wants them to be a people of justice and mercy, it’s another way of saying they should be like God. The motivation for being a people of godly character, in other words, is to see and appreciate who God is, and to want therefore to be like him.

Let’s be honest. In much of the Christian life, we’re faking it. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. But it can’t be the only thing. We have to see the beauty of the character of Jesus. We have to want to be like that, even if we know we’ll never quite get there in this lifetime. In that sense, we’ll never quite “make it.” But that’s still the end toward which we must live and work.

And somewhere along the way, it all becomes more and more who we truly are.