Page 21 - Demo

The Poser
One day I was in a mall with a group of friends. As we were entering a work-wear clothing store, targeted towards your everyday blue-collar worker. I heard a friend say, “I bet Nate could live here!” I thought to myself “Oh, maybe that’s someone I can be”. Someone who can live in the glorious unending amount of work attire cause I’m “tough” and a “real man”, fully bleeding into the marketing this work-wear clothing store wants you to believe. Author and speaker, John Eldredge, calls this the “poser”. Someone who has naturally crafted this false sense of identity over time through what was shamed and what was rewarded in our life. The poser is very crafty as we often mistake this person for our true selves. “It’s not the true you, it’s not the real you!” He says at a conference. This “poser” can come in many shapes and forms all falling under the same umbrella of faking your way through life to gain approval of others. I have heard other teachers and pastors refer to this way of hiding as a “mask” or “fig leaf”—it all means the same thing. My way of posing came from making others think I was your stereotypical blue-collar man. One who wakes up early, eats only food from a gas station, drinks black coffee because anything other than that would be considered feminine, and ultimately buries his true heart for the approval of others. And I will say with that, it was working well. I was getting pay increases, staying above busy with multiple work opportunities, and getting recognized by others for my work ethic and long hours I would put in. I was on my way to gain the world but lose my soul as Jesus puts it in the book of Matthew. If it’s not Christ who we let take our breath away, we’ll look to something that does.