On Wearing A Verse You Haven't Lived Up To Yet

The first time I put on a shirt with a verse on the back I had not yet lived up to, I felt like a fraud. The verse on the print was about courage. I had not been particularly courageous that week. I had not been particularly courageous that month. I checked the mirror once, then took the shirt off and wore something else.

If you have ever done this, you are not alone, and you are not, for what it is worth, a fraud.

What The Shirt Is Doing

There is a quiet assumption a lot of believers carry that the symbols of faith we wear, post, and carry are claims about who we are. The cross necklace says I am a finished Christian. The verse on the back of the tee says I have arrived at this verse and live in its full meaning every day.

This is a misreading of what the symbol does. The symbol is not a credential. It is closer to a vow.

A vow is a public statement of intent under conditions of incomplete fulfillment. You do not get married because you are already a perfect spouse. You get married because you intend to become one, and the public ceremony is partly there to bind your future self to the intent.

Wearing a verse functions the same way. You wear the verse not because you have arrived at it. You wear it because you have decided to walk toward it, in public, with witnesses.

The Apostle Paul Wrote To His Own Failures

Read the second letter to the Corinthians. Paul, who founded churches and wrote a third of the New Testament, spends most of that letter explaining that he is weaker than people think, that he has been depressed to the point of giving up, that he has a thorn in the flesh that God refused to remove. He calls himself an "earthen vessel" carrying a treasure he cannot keep up with.

That is the language of someone who has not lived up to the verses he writes. It is also the language of the man who wrote, "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content," and "Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children." Paul wrote both kinds of sentences in the same letters. He was not lying when he wrote the high ones, and he was not lying when he wrote the low ones. He was a man in the middle of a process, putting both publicly on record.

If Paul could write the high verses while admitting the low ones, you can wear the high verses while admitting the low ones. The shirt is not a lie. It is a record of the direction you are walking, not a snapshot of where you currently are.

What To Do With The Discomfort

The discomfort is a signal, but it is not a signal to take the shirt off. It is a signal that the shirt is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

A symbol that creates no internal tension is doing nothing. A flag that you forget you are carrying is no longer a flag; it is just decoration. The mild discomfort of wearing a verse you are still walking toward is the part of the day where the symbol is actually working on you. You feel the gap between what you are and what the verse asks. The gap is the point.

Three things help with the discomfort.

Pray the verse, briefly, when you put on the shirt. Not as a ritual. Not as a magical incantation. Just as a way of acknowledging out loud what you are committing to. Thirty seconds. The shirt becomes a small daily renewal of intent rather than a costume.

Tell one person what it means. Not a stranger. A friend. The shirt loses its accusing quality the moment another person knows what is on the back and why. The witness you most need is not the stranger at the gas station. It is the friend who will ask how the walking is going.

Let yourself fall short of it without taking it off. This is the hardest one. The instinct is to take the shirt off as soon as you fail to live up to it. Don't. Wear it on a bad day. Wear it during the lapse. Wear it during the long flat stretch of the year where nothing spiritual feels alive. The shirt is doing more for you on those days than it does on the days you feel righteous.

What This Means For The Rest Of Christian Life

The shirt is a small case of a larger principle. We are all, all the time, wearing verses we have not yet lived up to. The marriage vow you took ten years ago. The baptism. The promises you made to your kids. The verse you taped to the mirror in February. None of these things are claims about who you currently are. They are commitments about who you are walking toward.

You are not a fraud for making the commitment before the commitment is complete. You are exactly where every honest believer has always been.

Wear the shirt. Walk the verse.