A challenge about...pretense

Pretense... Should it concern me?

A.W. Tozer writes, "{We} need deliverance from the burden of pretense.

By this I mean not hypocrisy, but the common human desire to put the best foot forward and hide from the world our real inward poverty.

For sin has played many evil tricks upon us, and one has been the infusing into us a false sense of shame. There is hardly a man or woman who dares to be just what he or she is without doctoring up the impression.

The fear of being found out gnaws like rodents within their hearts.
  • The man of culture is haunted by the fear that he will some day come upon a man more cultured than himself.
  • The learned man fears to meet a man more learned than he.
  • The rich man sweats under the fear that his clothes or his car or his house will sometime be made to look cheap by comparison with those of another rich man."
The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer


Pretense is all about posturing, appealing, luring, and being 'seen' as important, influential and needed. The statements above are an open admission that we all have a dark side we don't want anyone to see.

Why is there so much pretending, when I'm really falling apart inside?

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