Fake it Histrionically Until You Make It

16-year old G. was making fun of his mother’s singing by singing in an exaggerated operatic way when his mother happened to wander in. She listened for a bit. “You’re sounding better,” she said. “I knew if you stuck with it you’d get better.”  And he was better after that.

19-year old G. was at the MTC learning Spanish. He thought it would be funny to say something in class with an exaggerated Speedy Gonzales accent. “Hey,” his instructor said, “your accent is getting pretty good. That was pretty good.”  He meant it.

Married G. and Mrs. G. were on the honeymoon. Say, they said, what if we sneak home to our new house and no one expects us back for a couple more days and we can play house. Which they did. She baked her first bread while he dug dandelions out of his first lawn. It was monstrous fun.

Everyone knows fake it until you make it. What is less known is that the pretense often has to seem exaggerated and over the top for it to work. You can then relax a bit into the real thing.

I don’t know how it is with women, but with men it does seem like at some point you have to embrace a caricature of masculinity before you can find the real thing. What they sometimes bitingly call ‘male-to-male transsexual,” like all those Black Rifle Coffee ads.

I get frustrated with Christians who often seem like they are trying to be Jesusy than Jesus.  Maybe I should reconsider.  Maybe they are going through a useful, sometimes even necessary, phase.

This is one of the goods of serving a mission for those who do.  It allows you to work out the kinks being excessive.