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Holy Imposter Syndrome
The term might not be familiar to you, but the concept behind it most likely is—imposter syndrome. It’s the feeling, often experienced in professional or academic contexts, that you can’t do what everyone believes you can and expects of you. You feel like an imposter. Any success you seem to have experienced up until this point was a fluke. You’re a fraud, and any moment now everyone is going to realize it. It’s only a matter of time.
Maybe you’ve felt like this in the workplace or at school. I just experienced it today. I’ve been speaking at a conference where all the other speakers are people I deeply admire, people who are unusually gifted and able, people you’d expect to be at these sorts of events. So what was I doing there? Surely there must have been some mistake. The moment I step up to the podium, it’ll be obvious to all—I don’t belong here.
At one time, I was involved with college ministry at the University of Oxford, and I recall a group appearing on Facebook at the start of the new academic year called “I Got into Oxford by Mistake: Can I Go Home Now Please?” It almost immediately numbered several hundred members. For some, it would’ve been a bit of a joke. But many of the students I was talking to were serious. They felt profoundly out of their depth.
But the existence of such a group was also a comfort. If so many others feel like imposters, then you realize you’re not on your own and slowly start to feel like less of an imposter. Part of how this syndrome works is that you assume everyone else is fitting in just fine and only you have a problem.
It’s easy for Christians to experience a form of imposter syndrome. As we look around at the other people at church, it can seem as though they all belong here. They have the Christian life figured out. They know what they’re doing. But it’s a different story for ourselves. We might have been Christians for years, but it still feels as though it hasn’t really taken yet. We want to be real Christians but wonder if we ever will be. It doesn’t seem to come naturally to us; we’re still far from figuring it all out.
Spiritual Imposters?
We can feel this most intently with holiness. We know it’s commanded of us. We certainly want to live in a way that’s worthy of the gospel. We want to change, to be more like Jesus. Yet it can feel so alien to us. Even the word “holy” sounds otherworldly. Our default settings seem to take us in the opposite direction. Whatever holiness is, it isn’t me.
It’s like trying to speak in an unfamiliar language or trying on clothes that don’t quite fit. We wonder if there’s any point in persisting. Why try to be someone you’re clearly not? And so when we’re around other believers who seem to be living the Christian life with an approximation of success, we feel like the odd one out. An imposter.
When we’re around other believers who seem to be living the Christian life with an approximation of success, we feel like the odd one out. An imposter.
It’s an understandable way to feel. But we need to remember two things: (1) way more people feel the same way, and (2) we’re comparing what’s happening on the inside of our lives with what’s happening on the outside of theirs, which is hardly a fair fight. It’s the difference between having a front-row seat at a movie theater versus trying to listen in from the outside with your head pressed up against the wall. Our own hearts are on view to us 24-7 in high definition. No one else’s is. So when we’re tempted to look at other believers, wondering how they seem to have cracked the Christian life so effortlessly, we need to bear in mind that others are probably looking at us in the same way.
Rethink Sin
Natural though it might seem to think like an imposter, it’s actually completely untrue. The Bible is, of course, deeply realistic about the continuing presence of sinful tendencies in our lives. We aren’t yet rid of our sinful nature. The apostle John shows us that to think otherwise is a serious mistake: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. . . . If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 John 1:8, 10).
We can’t deny the reality of sin in our lives. To claim we haven’t sinned or that sin isn’t within our nature in any way is to lie to ourselves while calling God a liar. Foundational to healthy Christianity is coming to terms with our sin. Even the most mature and “advanced” disciples aren’t done with sin. In this life, our sin will never be fully in the rearview mirror. It’ll always be something we have to reckon with.
But that isn’t all there is to say on this matter. If one mistake is to claim that our faith in Christ means we’re effectively done with sin, another is to fail to grasp just how radically different things are now that Jesus is in our lives.
Who Am I?
It’s easy to think of the Christian life as being like that scene from the classic action movie Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones manages to leap onto the side of the Nazis’ truck, proceeds to climb in through the side door and throw a startled passenger out onto the road, and then wrestles the driver in an attempt to get control of the truck. As they fight, the truck veers and lurches about.
In this life, our sin will never be fully in the rearview mirror. It’ll always be something we have to reckon with.
It’s a common trope in action movies—the hero and villain fighting each other for control of the vehicle/plane/spaceship at a key moment in the story. And it feels a lot like what’s going on inside us as Christians. Christ has come to us and is now fighting our sinful nature. On our worse days, we wonder if he’ll prevail.
But the wonderful news of the gospel is that my relationship to sin has now radically changed. Yes, sin is still kicking around in my heart, but I relate to it in a different way now. The reason? Who I am is fundamentally different: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
It’s true a battle is going on inside us—a battle between what Paul calls the desires of the flesh and the desires of the Spirit (Gal. 5:17). But we mustn’t miss the larger point Paul has been making: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
This gets us to the heart of something central to the Bible’s teaching on what it means to be a Christian. Our union with Christ doesn’t just mean he identifies with us (wonderful though that is). It also means we identify with him—in a “this changes everything” kind of way. Our union means we identify with him in his death and rising. We died with him, and we have new life in him. Both are fundamental to understanding how and why knowing Jesus truly transforms us.
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