Posers

People and things are not always what they seem to be. I suppose that is true in almost every area of life. I sometimes feel like a “poser” when I put on my “leathers” and take the “Hog” out for a ride around the block.

In an interesting story out of Spokane, Washington, there appears to be a poser or two.

The parents of a prominent civil rights activist from Spokane, Wash., say she has falsely been passing herself off as being of partially black ethnicity. Rachel Dolezal, 37, is president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, serves as chair on the city’s Office of Police Ombudsman Commission, and is a part-time professor at Eastern Washington University where she teaches Africana Studies, according to MSNBC. On her application for the Ombudsman Commission, Dolezal identified herself as white, black and Native American, according to an Associated Press report in the Washington Times. But speaking to a local paper, the Couer d’Alene Press, on Thursday, Dolezal’s mother Ruthanne said the family’s ancestry was Czech, Swedish, German with “faint traces” of Native American. “It is very disturbing that she has become so dishonest,” she said of her daughter. (TIME)

It appears she has, or wants to be classified as having, a black ethnicity, or her mother doesn’t, or doesn’t want to appear, to have a black ethnicity. Somebody here is a poser.

Unfortunately it is clear that there are a lot of posers in the Church of Jesus Christ. The struggle between being obedient to Scripture (the Word of God) and living with obvious chosen inconsistencies is prevalent and prominent. The first Letter of John (see 1 John 4:7ff) to the Church makes it clear that one cannot llove God and hate his brother. Obviously that statement will call for some definitions (“llove” and “hate”), but posers abound. I never cease to be amazed at the number of folks who profess llove for Christ, but have open disregard, yes, even hate, for His Bride.

Being a “poser” is a disturbing issue. I don’t, however, hear much conversation about it.