"Daddy, Daddy, you will never guess what Mom and I saw." Chelsea was bouncing up and down on the dock as I was paddling in from fly-fishing. It looked like she was so excited that she was going to do a two-and-a-half gainer right into the drink. I thought to myself, "Great! Some stupid ole bear stumbled into camp while I was gone." This meant now I was going to have to convince Linda that we should stay at this camp and maybe even have to dispatch a problem bear. The truth is, I am lousy at convincing Linda of anything and I don't like shooting bears just because they begin to hang around camp.
"And so it was with a fair bit of reluctance that I beached the chestnut canoe and grabbed the thwart with both hands to extricate my ample butt from the narrow wicker seat. "What did you see, honey?" I asked Chelsea reluctantly.
""Mom and I were just sitting around camp and this little gray bird with a black head came and began to peck at the rolled oats I put down by the pine tree. And then this other bird that was twice its size and real ugly, awkwardly landed and sat beside it and began to scream at it. And you know what the little bird did? It hopped right over to the big bird and fed it like it was its baby. It looked really weird and it almost looked like she did it just to shut the big bird up." Chelsea spoke a hundred miles an hour and her eyes looked the size of sandwich plates.
"I breathed a sigh of relief and said, "That can't be, honey. You must be mistaken."
""No I am not Dad! Just go and ask Mom," Chelsea said indignantly.
"When I interrogated Linda back at camp, she confirmed Chelsea's story and added a name to the little bird. It was a dark-eyed junko (Junko hyemalis), a tiny little bird that kind of looks like a chickadee that's been on a severe diet and dyed its head of hair jet black. Linda had no idea what kind of bird the large one was but it appeared to be kind of stupid and made a very irritating noise when it tried to sing. It definitely lived off of the small skinny black-headed female. I named them Sonny and Cher.
"About a day later I was having a coffee and reading in my camp chair when the little Cher returned. She landed almost at my feet and began to peck at the tiny seeds in the gravel. Soon an awkward and loud Sonny plopped down beside her and began to sing for all he was worth in a voice that sounded like the swinging of an unoiled squeaky gate. Cher immediately hopped over to him and he crouched down and put his head up with his beak wide open, looking like any infant bird would when being fed by its parent. Cher stretched herself as much as she could and stuffed some seeds right down his big gullet. That shut Sonny up for a little bit but soon he was making that awful noise again.
"I knew I had heard that annoying noise before but I couldn't place it. For several minutes I sat looking and listening and then it hit me. Sonny was a fledgling brown-headed cowbird, (Molothrus ater) ugly and noisy, there was no mistaking that. Brown-headed cowbirds lay their eggs in other birds' nests. These eggs and the resulting fledglings are imposters or counterfeits and the poor unsuspecting mother bird, which the cowbird takes advantage of, never seems to catch on. It raises the cowbird as though it was its own, as though it is working hard to maintain its own species. And in the case of the tiny junko, that amounted to a whole lot of work for nothing.
"I sat and watched the imposter for a while and wished I had brought my cat. The young cowbird was so loud and demanding and the poor little junko was so quiet and accommodating. You could tell the little junko was getting run off her feet and stressed right out by the imposter. You could sense the entrapment. Finally she flew away and the immature cowbird went squawking right after her in hot pursuit.
"As the two of them left, I got to thinking about imposters. I thought about how they often give nothing and take everything. I thought about how they often take advantage of the unsuspecting and innocent. I thought about how they can wreak havoc and entrap. I guess imposters in every sphere of my life have duped me at least once but the worst imposters of all seem to show up in the spiritual realm.
"When I was at a time where I had really come to the end of myself, I began a spiritual search, at least that is what I called it, for something that would bring some peace to me, any peace. I tried booze, prescription drugs and several different religions pretty much all at the same time. I thought I was making some pretty good progress with my spiritual smorgasbord until one night Linda came out of the bedroom where she had been peacefully sleeping and found me on the living room sofa. I had my short fat legs crossed in as near to a full lotus position as I could muster, thumb touching middle finger on one hand, a beer clutched in the other, and a pill bottle full of tranquilizers on the coffee table. I was really concentrating, trying to muster the most impressive bass "ooooooommmm" that I could rally, one that would really set my brain to vibrating. My young Christian wife took one tired look at the pagan spectacle before her, laughed and returned to the bedroom. I knew right then things were not going too well. I knew right then that imposters were duping me. I knew my young Christian wife to be very spiritually perceptive.
"Satan is the greatest imposter and deceiver that operates in the spiritual realm. He deceitfully offers life and liberty but comes to steal away life and entrap. And often he does not work alone. The Apostle Paul wrote in the Bible, "Satan changes himself to look like an angel of light. So it does not surprise us if Satan's servants also make themselves look like servants who work for what is right." (2 Cor. 11:14-15)
"Today we have the great imposter and many of his servants promising to deliver all kinds of spiritual goods, promising a way to God. Today we have many unsuspecting people hungering for spiritual things, hungering for a relationship with God and the peace only God can give. Sociologists tell us that more people today are more hungry spiritually than perhaps at any other time in the history of North America. These hungry ones often make willing targets for the great imposter and his agents. But the truth is, the cold hard politically incorrect truth is, that there is only one true and living God and only one who can make Him known (John 1:18). He is the one who says, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." (John 14:9)
"As Christians, we have good news and bad news to announce to a spiritually hungry world. The bad news is that there is an imposter, one who can use many agents to lead a person down the garden path, one that will promise much and deliver little. Beware of the imposter. The good news is the person of Jesus Christ who said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6) The imposter will entrap with false promises of peace, spiritual truth, divine access and abundant living through all kinds of abstract spirituality. Only the person of Jesus Christ will deliver the goods. Only Jesus Christ guarantees his faithful: "And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." (John 8:32)
"Sometimes we humans make the imposters work so easy for him. The imposter is extremely tricky and will often disguise himself well. And we sometimes get so thirsty for spiritual things that we get demanding, let alone unsuspecting. Like the man in the old story that follows:
"At Park Rapids, Minnesota, a tramp walked into a restaurant and asked the proprietor for a free meal. The hobo looked so hungry and bedraggled that the sympathetic restaurant man said, "Ok, what'll yuh have?"
"The tramp sat down at a table and had a good meal, a first-class handout.
"As the hobo was leaving, he walked up to the proprietor and even bummed a cigarette. He fished in a pocket for a match and along with the match he carelessly pulled out a 20 dollar bill.
""Say, what's that," shouted the proprietor. "You come in here bumming a meal, and you've got 20 bucks." And he grabbed the banknote.
""But this was supposed to be a free meal," the hobo protested.
""Not on your life," said the restaurant man. "I'll just take 35 cents out of this 20."
""Just remember, buddy," said the tramp. "I don't want you to do this; I'm not asking you."
""Is zat so," responded the restaurant man, and he handed the hobo $19.65 in change.
"The unhappy ending of the story is that when the proprietor took the money to the bank he found that the $20 bill he had taken from the hobo was counterfeit.
