A Christian Imposter

I’m a Christian…I think.

But I’ve decided I have some kind of Christian Imposter Syndrome. Because I really struggle to think of myself as a Christian. Even typing out the words is hard, much less saying them out loud.

For one thing, I feel like all Christians must be better in some fundamental way. Like they have no doubts about God, they’re certain in their Christianity, they probably don’t do as many bad things as I’ve done (and do), and they’re just…something else that I am not.

For the last couple of years, I have been going back to church after more than twenty years of mainly staying away. It started pretty tentatively, just walking around the corner to the church that was a stone’s throw from my house in England. I listened to the bells chime and stared out my bedroom window at the steeple for many months before actually making the two-minute walk over on a Sunday morning.

It was a Church of England church (later described to me as a “high church”) and the service was so similar to the Episcopal services of my youth back in the States that I pretty much could have recited the entire service by heart. It was so familiar that I found myself immediately lapsing into old habits and looking around at the stained glass windows, admiring the architecture, wondering about the age of the building, and basically just thinking about anything other than the service. Short of counting letters and words on the pages of the prayer book, which I definitely did many times as a young acolyte, I reverted straight to ten-year-old me and found ways to distract myself and pass the time.

But, that’s not all that happened.

I was also overcome with emotion. I felt a deep sadness, somewhere in the depths of me, though I couldn’t have told you why. Maybe it was because I felt like such an outsider sitting there. You’d think that if it was familiar, I would have felt at home. But, I felt so separate. I felt like there was a spotlight on me, picking me out from the rest of the congregation. Like that game where you have to spot the thing that’s different, only a really easy version. Like Waldo with a bright orange construction vest on. I didn’t belong, and anyone who bothered to look at me would know.

My history with God and church is a bit complicated, I guess. My father was an Episcopalian priest, so I was in church almost every weekend growing up. But it wasn’t simple, because my parents were divorced and my Mom didn’t go to church at all. So, from the get-go, there was confusion as to who went to church and who didn’t and why and what it all meant. And in addition to confusion, there was anger and hurt and guilt and all the fun stuff that children of divorce sometimes (often) feel.

At this point, I could tell you all about the misery of being a child of divorced parents, and the awkwardness of trying to fit into one of your parents’ new life, and how that becomes even more complex when that new life is a holy one that includes God but you’re back in an old one that doesn’t. But instead of all that, let’s just say I did not arrive at adulthood with a firm belief in God or any semblance of a Christian life. And if the number of tears that came pouring out the moment I went back to church is anything to go by, I had some very deeply buried feelings that were all wrapped up and inextricable from church itself.

So I sat there and felt sad, and out of place, and distracted, and bored, and who knows what else. But, I also felt comfort, and curiosity, and longing, and a desire to understand and be rid of the sadness. And so I went back. Not the very next week, maybe not even the very next month. But I went back. And I kept going back. And by the time I hit the road in the hooptie (see my other blog if this doesn’t make sense) in early 2022, I was pretty determined to keep going to church.

I felt a pull and I wanted to follow it, but that was about it. I didn’t know what kind of church I wanted to go to, or what it meant for my life in general. I didn’t change any of my behavior or even really think about changing it. I certainly didn’t start thinking of myself as a Christian. I just knew that church seemed to be a connection to something I needed, and the place to keep looking even if I didn’t know exactly what for.

I hadn’t adopted any kind of anti-Christian stance during my time away from the church. I didn’t become a Satanist, or a Buddhist, or even really an atheist. I basically just decided that neither option presented to me thus far, God or no God, made any sense, and so I would just go on about my business and not really think about it. But I guess it’s not that strange that the term feels foreign, because at no point in my life have I identified as a Christian, and identity is a powerful thing. 

By the time I went back to church, I’d already spent years constructing an identity and building an image of who I was and who I wasn’t. Identity is huge in our world. Back in high school, it was a question of whether you were a stoner, a jock, a cowboy, a goth, a preppy, or a rocker. But even after high school, trying to navigate adulthood, there is so much pressure to “be yourself” and “be true to yourself”. Are you active and sporty? Maybe more vegan and yoga? Dog-loving hiker? Rule-breaking partier? It’s like instead of just being whoever we are, we have to choose who we are and then state it to the world and enforce it with our clothes and our lifestyle and our politics, and by the time you’re done deciding and choosing and building, you’re so entrenched in this identity you’ve built that there’s no going back. This image you’ve worked endlessly to portray has consumed you. And you may not even realize how much until you try to do something a little different. Until you try to think about who you were before you tried so hard to figure out who you were.

When I imagine telling people I am a Christian, I assume people will think less of me. Like I’ve been duped, or become naive, or maybe even gone crazy. They’ll look at me differently and all of a sudden I will be an imposter to them as well as myself. I don’t know where this fear comes from. But I guess in today’s world where image and identity rule us, Christianity is not exactly an Instagrammable quality. I mean, in many scenarios it’s not even something you’re allowed to talk about. The fear of how friends and family who have known me for years will react to me “finding religion” is a real one. Especially when, like me, you’re way too concerned with what other people think of you and pretty much desperate to fit in.

Becoming a Christian isn’t some small change to your identity, by the way. Not just a tweak you make and then drop in conversation over a cup of tea. It’s a big change. You might start off thinking it’s just adding in church on Sunday and a prayer here and there. But of course, it’s more than that. It’s a fundamental shift in all your priorities. It’s a game-changer. It’s something that now has the power to alter the way you think about everything else. And it kind of requires you to relook at everything you’ve done and thought and said and believed.

But here you still are, living your same life, with the same identity that you’ve built. But somehow you’re different. But you’re still you. And you’re still in your life. Your secular life. With all your secular friends. Doing all the same things you’ve always done. Completely uncertain how to fit this new thing in. Uncertain if you’re even still you.

It’s hard enough to try and admit to yourself that you believe in God and Jesus. But also, to do it right you’ve got to admit it to other people, to the world. I mean, to really do it right I probably need to stop using the word “admit” as though I have a guilty secret. I should be shouting it with joy, right? Not hiding it in a closet. But my instinct is to keep it quiet, to just keep it as this new part of me that doesn’t really need to change much of what people see on the outside, even though it’s flipping everything I’ve ever thought upside down on the inside. 

Christianity and God and church are rabbit holes of fear and uncertainty for me. Here is a sampling of questions I ask myself routinely. How much do I have to change? Am I even still me? How do I talk to God? Am I praying right? Do I need to buy new clothes? Are the people I love going to hell? Do I have to give up my career to help others? How do I trust God? Is it bad that I still like to wear lipstick? What church should I go to? Am I allowed to think the preacher is an idiot? What about sex? What’s a sin? How do I follow the commandments, and what even are they again? Am I allowed to want to be successful and make good money? Am I being duped? What should I be reading? What shouldn’t I be reading? Do I believe in the devil too? Have I really just joined a very successful cult?

I guess you get the picture. My questions range from the most serious subjects imaginable to the absolutely trivial, and I have so many more. I wish I could say I’m launching this new blog to answer all these questions. But really, I just want a place to air all these thoughts in my head. And maybe a way to start a conversation that I don’t know how to start in person. A blanket way to say “I’m a Christian” to everyone in the whole world…although I’d have to share the link with them first (in the very act of trying to leave the closet, I have arranged things in such a way as to allow myself to stay inside). 

So, that’s my opening blog, my first post about God and church and feeling like an imposter. I don’t know what it will take, or how much time will have to pass, for me to describe myself as a Christian and have it feel natural, but I guess this is an attempt to try and get there.