The story...
We met a new couple at church and invited them to our home for dinner. After dinner, we were sitting out on the deck discussing some essentials of the Christian faith. We were comparing scriptural knowledge with faith worked out in reality - a working relationship with God and others too. Uncomfortably, I regretfully opened up the subject of "fake it to make it." Clearly they were not attending this "new" church where some people were faking their Christian faith. We acknowledged that trying on the Christian faith might be part of a process - a process where our old self sorta dies in order to be reformed as a new sort of creature in Christ. They moved on to another church not long after our dinner discussion - I hope I didn't discourage their faith.
Faking a belief that you hope is true, so that it might become real, seems wrong. Yet, wanting to believe what another person believes and then believing that they believe may be first steps of faith for some.
Will the only church in town instruct children to act in a manner that's in accordance with the revealed will of God before they're saved? - yes. Will non-believers be accepted just as they are and be allowed to act out their role outwardly before they are changed internally? - yes. Ideally it'd be different but it often ain't.
Just for today...
"Gradually and together we built roots and a pair of wings so I could soar and feel connected at the same time. I borrowed her faith until I acquired my own." Hope for Today (p. 254)
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." Friedrich Nietzsche
"Acted the part; Hoped it true - God took me; Born anew." Am I a Poet?
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