F A K E

"Do you want to know Jesus, make cool friends, and have an awesome time? Then come join us for Chrisitan Fellowship at FOCUS!"

The day I went to visit a friend at Villanova I saw a flyer with that slogan on the wall. My initial response: laughter. I'm not going to lie, I laughed for about three minutes straight before I decided to take the flyer off the wall and take it with me. Now that I look back on it I'm not really sure why I had this insane desire to share the flyer with my friends and roommates, but I did. Now, the flyer is posted on my bulletin board in my room and occasionally starts discussion about christian fellowship youth groups and well the simple hilarity of the slogan.

Throughout all of highschool, I constantly had this battle with myself of whether I wanted to join the youth group at my church. It wasn't that I thought that I was too cool to join or that I would be too dorky to be seen with a Life Teen tshirt. I was proud to be Catholic and my faith was and is still a huge part of my life. The real truth was, without sounding like an afterschool special, I didn't feel like i fit in. And, no, it wasn't because I had self-esteem issues, it was more that I couldn't get the idea out of my head that the majority of those involved in Life Teen would raise their hands up in praise to the Lord on Sundays but throughout the rest of the week they were living less than chaste lives. Now, i'm not one to judge considering that I don't live my life any better, but at least I felt that I wasn't being over hypocritical. I mean in so many ways, I did deserve to join Life Teen with a clear concious--I wasn't flaunting my body around like it had no worth and wasn't lying and cheating like the commandments said. But, for some reason I still felt that it wasn't to my benefit to associate myself with people who weren't as deserving. I wasn't trying to put myself up higher than anyone, I just couldn't be around people who were so...fake. I wasn't judging the way they chose to live their lives or even how they spent their Sundays. All I knew was that it was fake; it was fake to act like you were this holy litte child of God in front of the Church and then a day later be doing everything you had just claimed to be against. Because here's the thing, everyone sins and the same goes for me, but like Jesus once said in the bible about the those who would flaunt their sacrifice and devotion to the church. "Don't let your right hand know what you are doing." That was the true way to pray and fast; humbly. In so many ways it's the only way to risk not being fake.