Column: The Imposter, Standing In the Way

By Drew Williams
Sentinel Columnist

What would your life look like if your identity truly rested upon God’s relentless, wholehearted, compassionate love for you? The Apostle John wrote, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are… Beloved, we are God’s children now” (1 John 3: 1-2a). The Irish writer and author Brennan Manning would argue that our difficulty in living in this reality is often because someone else is standing in the way. Manning refers to this someone as “the imposter” and describes him as cunning, baffling, powerful and insidious. You may recognize the imposter’s presence in your own life. There are many characteristics of his or her presence but let me give you three traits.

When I was 14 years old, I played Fagin in the Lionel Bart musical “Oliver!” The reviews in the local newspaper were very generous and so was the applause each night. It literally made my head swim; I felt lifted off the stage. It was the best “feeling” I had ever experienced. The production ran for a week and I lived for those five minutes of elation that came every night. I think that what should also be said about this exact period in time was that my family life was a disaster. To borrow from Charles Dickens, in terms of my acting career this was “the best of times,” but at home it was “the worst of times.” Looking back, I can see how the imposter made his move in the ruins of what had been “home.” Very quickly he had taken up center stage in my life, teaching me that my survival, my identity, was all rooted in other people’s acceptance and approval.

The deception here is legend. To begin with, the imposter would deceive us into thinking that he is protecting us (that is a lie all in itself), but the greater deception is that we are kept so busy attempting to please other people that we walk further and further from our true identity as God’s child. Do we recognize the imposter’s performance-driven machinations in our own lives? I brought this to the Lord recently. Prayerfully I sensed the Lord ask me, “Drew, do you say ‘No’ to people’s requests with the same confidence that you say ‘Yes’?” I felt that was a very insightful question.

Just beneath this performance-driven trait is a second characteristic of the imposter’s presence: the desperate fear of rejection. Following the glorious newspaper reviews and the nightly standing ovation, you would think that I was now abundantly blessed with all the confidence I would ever need. The following year I got the lead in “A Christmas Carol.” I did a good job as Scrooge but the applause was not quite as strong as the previous year’s. I quietly construed this as mild rejection. I was now 15 years old, but the imposter was quick to teach me that I was only as good as my last performance. I was really only “loved” by the measure of my actions.

This is, again, the very antithesis of what we are promised in God. John wrote, “From His fullness we have received, grace upon grace” (John 1:16). In our fear of rejection, we fear the loss of love. Hear this: the love of God is the love that can never be lost. By its very nature, God’s love is not based on our performance but on His.

Third, the imposter signals his presence in our lives with loneliness and isolation. Despite all my determination to win the crowd and be center stage (often quite literally), and with all the people who were applauding me in those years, I never, ever breathed a word of the heartache that was going on at home. I never confided in a teacher, a friend or a relative. No one. Ever. To risk being that vulnerable was not part of the imposter’s plan. To say how I truly felt would blow my cover and risk rejection. Despite appearances to the contrary, I look back and see that those were some of the loneliest, emptiest days of my life.

So what’s the antidote? What do we do with the imposter? How do we end his reign of performance-driven, fear-centered isolationism? We need to take the imposter by the hand and lead him into the presence of God. To be in the presence of God is to illuminate the truth, the startling revelation that I am the imposter. Not some puff of malevolent smoke, not some impersonal entity. The imposter is a very real part of me. He is not a veneer, not some thin layer that covers what is essentially a very nice person. He is me! And I need to confess that.

And there in the presence of God I am plunged into an encounter with the fullness of God’s grace. From the fullness of His grace upon grace, God accepts the imposter. He was never fooled by this false self and He does not reject me. That may shock us. The scandal of grace says that we must also do the same. I must accept the truth about me!

This is where the imposter fights back with a little more “fear” that all this “self-acceptance” nonsense will abort the ongoing process of good and Godly transformation. I would suggest that self-acceptance falls into essentially three camps. The first camp says “Well, this is just who I am. And I am okay with that.” God does not intend for us to be resigned to the status quo. The second camp says, “I accept my guilt but I am so filled with shame that while God may say He forgives me, I never will!” Neither is this the self-acceptance that God is asking of us. The third camp says, “I need to accept His acceptance of who I really am. No more pretending. No more character performances. Just a simple acceptance that I am the imposter and I am loved by God.”

When we can hold these two truths—accepting that God remains relentlessly tender and compassionate toward us just as we are; that though God will never condone or sanction graceless deception, He will never withhold His love because there is evil in me—we can move forward.

The more fully we accept ourselves, the more fully we can begin to grow and be transformed by God into the person He always intended us to be. Recognizing this will always open me anew to the transforming flow of His grace and mercy. And how much more grace, mercy, love and patience will I have for the imposter who lives in my neighborhood, works in my office, or drops off his or her kids at the same school gate if I am accepting about the imposter who lives within me?

Drew Williams is senior pastor at Trinity Church in Greenwich.

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