Our family loves to watch Kids Baking Championship on The Food Network. About a dozen kids between the ages of nine to twelve from across the U. S. (& one from Canada this season) compete on the weekly show to see which kid will be crowned best kid baker in the nation.
One of the shows challenges which has become a tradition is “dessert imposters.” It involves the kids each using baked goods to create an identical look-alike to a meal from a theme given by the hosts. Like every challenge, there is a twist thrown in along the way to make the kids up their game just a little more. Some of the dessert imposters are easily spotted as fakes… not looking much like the real thing at all. Others are amazingly life-like replicas. Some even taste good.
But what struck me tonight is how how hard those kids work to create something fake. I know that’s the assignment for that part of the competition. It’s just crazy that it takes as much… or maybe even more… effort to produce a fake as it would to create the real thing.
And I wonder how many people are doing the same thing in their lives… working like crazy to create an imposter of what they think a real, successful life looks like. I wonder how different their life would be if they applied that same amount of effort at being their real self… genuine and authentic. What if they quit using filters on every picture of themselves? What if they didn’t pad their résumé with those carefully researched words they know employers are looking for? What if they used social media to be sincere and to encourage others?
I guess we all have some room for improvement in this area. I know the struggle is real to retain our integrity when it feels like we need to make ourselves sound like more. But why must we create imposters of ourselves?
We are each created by God, in His image. He loves us and values us as original masterpieces. None of our efforts to make ourselves look better than we are… or to look like someone else… are impressive to Him.
Truth be told, when our efforts are tested and prove that we are not what we tried to make ourselves look like, it’s not impressive to anyone else either. So, again I ask… why apply all the effort to crafting a fake us when, with the same amount of effort applied, we could make the original us shine.
So I’m calling on all of us today to take one significant step toward being less fake and toward being authentic. Maybe it’s only one social media post. Maybe it’s an interview. Maybe it’s a conversation with someone you find yourself starting to love. Whatever the case, let’s be real. Let’s skip the imposter round… regardless of how sweet it may sound
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