Get Your Pretense On!

16 • Get Your Pretense On!

and what part you can play in his great adventure of rescue and reversal, then you will be ready to get going and to apply yourself in the direction he leads. Only after you see, can you “get your pretense on” and start acting like you truly are who he says you are. Of course, too, this is a work that had to be written, but needed to end (if you understand my meaning). In other words, each of the chapters in this work could easily take its own unique text, with its argument and explanation. Consider this a primer of the kind of mindset that every effective ambassador and agent of Jesus Christ must have in order to affect the kind of change that the Spirit would have her do in the situation where he has placed her. It is a combination of grand epic ideas and practical daily tasks. It covers the entirety of the biblical vision, but drills down on what it means to be a middle-schooler for Jesus. This is, of course, the way it is with all Christian subjects. Theologically, the themes are dipped into the greatest story ever told, but practically, they relate to the meeting that we have with friends or family tomorrow night. Be flexible in your modes of reading it; sometimes it will require you to put on a prophet’s mantle and think with the sages over the great issues of our time (see Appendix, The Story of God ), and other times you simply have to understand why a 155-pound police officer can make an 18-ton diesel truck grind to a halt (see Appendix, Understanding Leadership as Representation ). C. S. Lewis instinctively knew that nothing can be truly learned in Christian thought and experience without this need to experience good pretense, that is, to act like you are who God says you are, no matter how you feel or how things look. Consider this book a field manual for good pretense. In some ways, this work is a collection of sermons, presentations, and essays, all of which together represent a theological constellation of six of the most fundamental concepts I believe are necessary to