Are you tired of pretending?

Have you ever been shadowed at work? Or observed during an interview? We often find it uncomfortable to be watched.

This is the predicament that the three protagonists in the latest season of the hit TV comedy drama series Only Murders in the Building find themselves in. In Season Three, amateur detectives Mabel, Charles and Oliver learn that their true-crime podcast is being made into a Hollywood movie. As they begin solving yet another murder, they also end up being shadowed by the three actors hired to play them in the film.

These actors copy their every move – their fashion sense, their gait, their nervous habits. And as the series progresses, we see Mabel, Charles and Oliver uncomfortable with the version of themselves being reflected back to them. Mabel is portrayed as sad, Charles as worried and boring. Memorably, the actor playing Oliver says to him:

‘I kind of have a risky take on your character, I was thinking about playing him talented. Successful. Completely aware that it’s the year 2024.’

How horrible, to be examined so closely and found wanting. Isn’t it what we all dread most?

Don’t we go to great lengths to avoid this? We always put our best foot forward – we clean our homes before people come over, we buy the furniture we can’t really afford, we pick the photo with the best version of us in it (it doesn’t matter that someone else’s eyes were shut). We do these things to convince not just others, but also ourselves that there is nothing at all wrong with us.

Speaking to this in his book The Pursuit of God, theologian A.W. Tozer said that we delude ourselves into thinking we are ‘little gods’ – even though the effort to do so is immense. He calls this ‘a burden of pretence,’ and describes it as ‘a heavy and crushing thing.’

But what Only Murders wants to tell us is this: isn’t it better to stop pretending? Eventually, having been confronted so persistently with the parts of themselves that need work, Charles, Oliver and Mabel are no longer able to deny their imperfections – and instead learn from them. Cautious Mabel, for example, decides to ‘take a leaf out of’ her Hollywood shadow’s book, and makes a bold decision about where she will live.

Only Murders says: Stop being deceived by yourself, because it frees you to fix what needs fixing. Abandon your efforts to pretend you are fine and strive instead to make yourself better. But isn’t that just leaving one impossible fight and entering another?

As Tozer reminds us, the Christian can find true rest from either fight. He says this about the believer:

‘[He] has stopped being fooled about himself. He has accepted God’s estimate of his own life. He knows he is as weak and helpless as God has declared him to be, but paradoxically he knows at the same time that he is in the sight of God of more importance than angels … he has attained a place of soul rest.’

So, the next time our delusion of self-grandeur is pierced for a moment – when someone makes a quip at our expense or gives critical feedback – maybe we can see it as an opportunity to also stop being fooled about ourselves. And to remember instead our new identity, given to us through Jesus: helplessly insufficient, but also helplessly loved.