Writers are insecure … especially when they’re writing. Oh sure, they seem self-confident, like they have the world by the tail. But when they’re alone and they’re sure no one’s watching, they tell themselves that whatever it is they’re working on is garbage … and how did they ever think they had anything important to say? Who are they kidding, anyway? They’ve seen Marmaduke cartoons with greater intellectual verve and emotional depth.

As a corollary to all the self-loathing, writers are convinced that other writers don’t suffer from this same doubt. In fact, all the stuff other writers write is probably brilliant, unlike all the stupid drivel you’ve been dumping on the world day after day.

Most writers regularly convince themselves that they ought to quit—that the whole thing is just too difficult and that they’re not any good at it anyway. Maybe the highway department needs someone to supervise trash pickup along the interstate.

It’s a crisis of confidence: “What if I’m not all that? What if I’m just a big phony?”

All right, so maybe you’re not a writer, but have you ever done that to yourself about something you care about? You want to learn Spanish, or how to paint with watercolors, or rebuild a transmission, or go noodling with native Arkansans. When you’re in the middle of doing it, there are regular occasions, I bet, where you think to yourself, “I’m the worst. Somebody smart wouldn’t have any trouble with this. I swear, I should just give up.”

In academia, we call this “imposter syndrome”: The fear that people will find out that you’re just faking your way through it all—that everyone else is competent—but you, unfortunately, are not.

Imposter syndrome. You’re just one step away from being discovered as a fraud.

I remember the summer of 2006 very well. I worked here at Douglass while my predecessor, Dean Bucalos, was on sabbatical. I was also taking a French reading course to pass one of my language exams for my degree. Additionally, at the beginning of that summer, I had surgery on my elbow—about the same time that Susan’s dad was diagnosed with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, a rare brain disorder that looks kind of like Parkinson’s disease on steroids. He died before the summer was over.

Needless to say, it was a pretty stressful summer. But one of the things I found most anxiety-producing was the fact that I was getting ready to teach two courses in World Religions at U of L. I’d been hired as a Graduate Teaching Assistant and was required to teach two courses a semester and one every summer beginning in the fall.

I was nervous about it. For one thing, I’d never taught World Religions before. I felt comfortable teaching about Christianity and Judaism, two religious traditions I’d spent my life studying. But Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam? I figured as June opened that I knew as much about them as my students were likely to know—which is to say, hardly a thing. I had to spend all my free time that summer studying French or learning three-fifths of the world’s great religions.

The other thing that kept me up at night was thinking I would be responsible for teaching college kids … for actual money. I was a student myself, so I knew how much these students and their parents paid per credit hour. With thirty-five students in the class, we were talking about thousands of dollars people were shelling out to hear me talk about something I had no background in. If I was awful at it, I didn’t know what I’d do for the rest of my life—because, at that point, I knew the one thing I never wanted to be again was a minister.

In the GTA office, before classes started, I remember the conversation between the first-year GTAs. We were sure somebody in charge would discover that some genius had made a colossal mistake. They were going to let us teach students for money?

What were they thinking, turning over classrooms to us without adult supervision? For much of that fall semester, we were sure somebody would walk into the office, call out our names, and say, “Listen, somebody screwed up. We can’t let you teach actual human beings. In fact, we’re surprised you thought you could fool us this long. You’re going to have to go back where you came from.”

Do you ever feel that way? Like you’re waiting for a grownup to come along and take over before you completely ruin everything?

All Saints Day has a way of reminding me what a huge phony I am. All these people who’ve lived faithful lives, in many cases, heroic lives—and here I sit, pretty sure that I’m the only one who doesn’t have the slightest clue—that everybody else must have it figured out in ways that will forever elude me.

All my insecurities come bubbling up on All Saints. I’m not that great at a lot of things preachers—let alone Christians—are supposed to be good at. I’m not that great at prayer. I get angry way too quickly—and not only during rush hour on I–64. I’m way more self-centered than I’m comfortable admitting—even to myself. I’m more afraid of what’s happening in the world—political and otherwise—than I think I should be. I get too impatient. I’m assailed by doubts.

Have you ever felt that way—that everybody else has it figured out while you’re sitting alone in the dark, hoping against hope that your whole world doesn’t come tumbling down because of your incompetence?

Have you ever felt like the blessings others enjoy are theirs because they somehow deserve them, but your lack of blessing totally reflects what you deserve?

Have you ever felt that whatever else can be said of your faith, it certainly doesn’t measure up to everyone else’s, let alone the saints?

Look at our Gospel for this morning. Jesus is offering up his sermon on the plain—an abridged variation of Matthew’s sermon on the mount. Luke open’s our text for this morning with Jesus saying: