Acting, Identity, and Spiritual Discipline
Eric Schansberg reflects on acting, identity, hypocrisy, and the spiritual disciplines. Through examples from Jessie Buckley, Jim Carrey, Heath Ledger, and C.S. Lewis, he considers when “pretending” can deform a person—and when it can help cultivate Christlike character.
- Acting can shape identity in both harmful and fruitful ways.
- Spiritual disciplines are means toward a godly life, not ends in themselves.
- Healthy discipline requires perseverance, discernment, community, and reliance on the Holy Spirit.
By Eric Schansberg
In March, Jessie Buckley went viral for her Academy Award-winning acceptance speech. In a bit over one minute, she professed an exuberant love for her husband and child—and extolled the virtues of marriage and family. Beyond what she said, it was how she said it. You can hear the overflowing gratitude, joy, and wonder in her voice. You can see the same in her broad smile and her glowing demeanor. And the kicker: She noted that it was Mothers’ Day in the U.K.
Buckley had won the “Best Actress” award for her work as Shakespeare’s wife in Hamnet. The movie is not everyone’s “cup of tea.” But it is exquisitely crafted, with excellent music and costumes, and impressive acting by Buckley, Paul Mescal (playing Shakespeare), and three child actors who depict their children. In the “Behind the Scenes” documentary about the film, the actors praise the film’s director (Chloe Zhao) for her work in cultivating a “family” atmosphere on the movie set and framing an artistic and beautiful expression of marriage and family. When you hear Buckley talk, it’s obvious that the process of acting awakened great and wonderful things within her.
Acting, Identity, and the Mask
In contrast, Jim Carrey had trouble understanding and maintaining his identity through acting, especially in his depiction of the comedian/entertainer Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon. Carrey describes this in the documentary Jim and Andy. Given the difficulties of portraying Kaufman, a creative but bizarre man—or was he merely playing a character?—Carrey decided to stay fully in character 24/7, on-screen and off-screen. But by the end of the filming, he said “I didn’t know who I was anymore.”
Adding to the complexity, Carrey also depicted Tony Clifton in the movie—a wildly eccentric character that Kaufman had created. Carrey said, “No one really knew what was real and not real half the time.” Presumably, this made Carrey more effective in depicting Kaufman (and Clifton). But the experience left him profoundly shaken about who he was. He “felt so good being Andy” because he was free from himself and “on vacation from Jim Carrey.” But if you’re not comfortable being yourself, what’s left?
A more famous example: Heath Ledger died of a drug overdose at age 28, months after playing The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. While there have been lighter depictions of Batman’s nemesis, Ledger described his version of the criminal as a “psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy.” While Ledger’s death was ruled an accident, he took a mix and quantity of drugs that make it difficult to imagine without at least a tinge of suicide. We’ll never know for sure, but it is reasonable to speculate that acting like The Joker was not good for Ledger’s mental and spiritual health.
Really, it’s surprising that this doesn’t happen more often. At its root, acting is a lie, pretending to be what you’re not, wearing a mask to conceal your own identity—in an effort to depict or even to “become” someone else. The Greek word “hypocrite” originated with the varied masks worn by theater performers as they changed into different characters. The actors were “two-faced!” The term came to be used to describe the hypocrisy of saying one thing and doing another. Jesus used the concept to great effect in his teaching, especially in the Sermon on the Mount and his blistering rant against the Pharisees in Matthew 23.
In The Mask, Carrey’s character observes that when he puts on the mask, he “can do anything … be anything.” But when you can “be anything,” can you really confidently be … anything, really? Think of how common it is for child actors to be a mess as adults. Surely, much of this is the difficulty of handling fame, popularity, and wealth—even for well-adjusted adults. Some of it may be the immersion in a world that is often hostile to Christianity—or even, to basic morality. But part of it likely stems from the practice of pretending to be other people and failing to cultivate one’s true self.
The key question is whether an actor can repeatedly practice being a hypocrite—as an actor—while leaving his actual character unharmed. The examples of Heath Ledger and Jim Carrey indicate that the answer is no—or at the least, that the practice is fraught with danger. But Jessie Buckley’s testimony points to the provocative possibility that emulating someone, “putting on” a character or a character trait, “dressing up” as someone respectable might work out well after all.
Spiritual Disciplines and Holy Pretending
We see something quite similar in the practice of disciplines—spiritual or otherwise. Ideally, the disciplines are practiced with a heart that aims to become better at something—or to become a better someone. Simply put: For Christians, a spiritual discipline is aimed at becoming more like Jesus. This is often a point of confusion, especially in the religious realm, where it’s easy to confuse means and ends. Parapharasing Dallas Willard, the goal of spiritual disciplines is not to practice the disciplines, but to cultivate a spiritually-disciplined life. We should only practice a discipline insofar as it helps us lead a more godly life.
But disciplines are not practiced with such a rosy outlook in every moment. If they were, we wouldn’t use the term “discipline!” For example, if eating my favorite flavor of ice cream made me a better man, it would be silly to call that a discipline. In contrast, I don’t always feel like being patient with my wife and kids—and so, sometimes I pretend. I’m not always in the mood to work out at the gym when the time comes, but I usually go anyway. I don’t always want to teach Economics or the Bible, but I’m thankful to have a job and ministry opportunities that “force” me to do it. And so on.
So, sometimes we practice a discipline when we “don’t feel like it.” And that must be okay, because we can’t persevere in a discipline—or receive its fruits—without that reality. In a word, we sometimes act as if we want to do the thing, even when we really don’t. In this, we’re much like the actor who pretends to be one thing while doing another. And as Buckley’s example illustrates, acting to be something can help me be more like the ideal I’m portraying.
But if we never feel like doing the discipline, that’s not a good sign either. If we have to muster extraordinary willpower to practice the discipline, it is unlikely to last. So, when is pretending good for us—and when is it bad for us? Where is the line? “Fake it til you make it”? Maybe. But this can be dangerous, since it can devolve into harmful legalisms, fading willpower, or performative hypocrisy.
C.S. Lewis describes this in Mere Christianity (Book 4, Chapter 7): “There are two kinds of pretending. There is a bad kind, where the pretense is there instead of the real thing …. But there is also a good kind, where the pretense leads up to the real thing. When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.”
Ten Principles for Practicing Disciplines
All this said, there are important principles in play here, but no clear lines to be drawn. So, ten concepts to consider as I close this out:
- We should typically embrace disciplines of omission to deal with sins of commission—and disciplines of commission to deal with sins of omission.
- Remind yourself often about your goals and the benefits of achieving them.
- Avoid conflating the means with the ends. Practicing the discipline is not the goal.
- Don’t beat yourself up for failing to do the disciplined thing on any given day.
- Don’t beat yourself up for not always wanting to practice a discipline.
- If you find yourself increasingly disliking the discipline, reconsider its merits and look for ways to shift gears.
- Continue to look for new and better ways to practice the disciplines (For example, I wrote The Word Diet to help newbies get into the Bible when other methods have failed them).
- Disciplines are not always for forever. Prayerfully wrestle with whether it’s time to stop practicing any given discipline.
- Find ways to practice the disciplines in community—for greater accountability and the side benefit of relationships that make it easier to “take your medicine.”
- Pray for strength and perseverance, relying on the informing and empowering role of the Holy Spirit.
Author: Christian Standard
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