Living close to and being involved with my two grandsons (ages 4 and 8) almost every day gives me the opportunity to do a lot of pretending. In recent weeks I’ve played the parts of Superheroes as well as a variety of “bad guys.” And it usually is a lot of fun.

Yesterday I read an interesting blog by Lance Witt entitled Image Management that sounds a lot like pretending to me. The difference, however, is that Image Management is neither a game nor fun. Witt’s primary intended audience is pastors and ministry leaders, but what he says is applicable to all Christians.

Those familiar with the New Testament no doubt are aware that Jesus’ primary issue with the Pharisees was what he called hypocrisy. They managed their images by pretending to be something they were not. What they projected to be on the outside by their actions did not match what they actually were on the inside.

Whether we are Christians or not, most of us know that pharisaism is not dead. As a matter of fact, chances are there is a little Pharisee inside all of us. To manage our images we sometimes struggle to let people know we really are not as good or as far along in our spiritual maturity as they think we are. Image management is not really management but deception.

By raising this subject I’m not suggesting that the thing for us to do is to become totally transparent with anyone and everyone in all our interactions with others. To refrain from pretending that we are better than we are, or that we have no problems, does not require us to publically “air our dirty laundry”.

I think what I am trying to say about this issue of image management or pretending is that we really need to work at being authentic. But again, to be authentic is not a call to total transparency.

When we give up pretending and become authentic we realize we have a new freedom. And that freedom opens the door and paves the way for us to actually make progress in what we want to become.

At the conclusion of his article Witt relates the honest words of a veteran Christian leader in his upper sixties: “The older I get the less concern I have with what I have or have not done and the more concern I have for what I have or have not become.” I’m in my late sixties and those are a couple of things I too would like to have less concern and more concern about.

By the way, pretending is not a bad thing — especially with grandchildren — as long everyone knows that we are just pretending.

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