Let’s Pretend

Do you remember as a child playing “dress up?”  Putting on your parents shoes or shirts and trying not to fall over walking around?  You felt big, grown up, if just for a couple of minutes.  Oh what fun!

Of course, now you are all grown up and where “big people clothes” all the time.  Instead of giggling at how big the shoe on your foot is, it’s just a normal sized shoe on your adult sized feet.  But did you know that  we adults are supposed to play dress up too?  And God has even ordered us to do it!  C.S. Lewis explains it like this:

What is the good of pretending to be what you are not?  Well, even on a human level, you know, there are two kinds of pretending.  There is a bad kind, where the pretense is there instead of the real thing; as when a man pretends he is going to help you instead of really helping you.  But there is also a good kind, where the pretense leads up to the real thing.  When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are.  And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were.  Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.  That is why children's games are so important.  They are always pretending to be grown-ups—playing soldiers, playing shop.  But all the time, they are hardening their muscles and sharpening their wits so that the pretense of being grown-up helps them grow up in earnest.

Now, the moment you realize ‘Here I am, dressing up as Christ,’ it is extremely likely that you will see at once some way in which at that very moment the pretense could be made less of a pretense and more of a reality….The real Son of God is at your side.  He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself.  He is beginning, so to speak, to ‘inject’ His kind of life and thought…into you; beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man.

- Mere Christianity, pgs. 188-189.

Jesus came down and showed us how to live.  And the more we imitate Jesus, the more like Him we are.  Not just because He asked us too, but because our lives can’t help but be better when we act like Jesus!

Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children. Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.  Eph. 5:1-2