Nate loved his Rolex and learned that every other Rolex-wearer felt the same. I remember a moment when the two of us were sitting on an ice cold bleacher-bench in a local park, watching Little League baseball on a winter-like spring day. The lady on the other side of him was bragging loudly to her friend about her new Rolex watch, a gold version she said had cost thousands. I knew that was true, having had my own gold Rolex several years before.

As I listened to her bragging, I was awash in regret for having carelessly lost my watch. “Lucky her,” I thought. “She’s still got hers.”

Then Nate leaned over and whispered, “That’s not a Rolex.”

“What?” I said, confused by his comment. Her watch looked exactly like mine, and of course she was vouching for it.

“It’s a knock-off,” he said.

“How can you tell?”

“The hands. Her second hand is jumping with each tick. On a real Rolex it sweeps.”

I was impressed he knew that, and suddenly unimpressed with the woman’s bragging. It’s possible her watch was a gift and she didn’t know she’d been given a fake, but whatever the case, all the boasting in the world wasn’t going to turn that counterfeit into the genuine article.

Apparently every designer product made these days has a knock-off version at a radically discounted price. I could buy a $2000 “Prada” bag for only $155 or a pair of “Louboutin” high heels worth $2400 for only $68. Of course just as Nate recognized the fake Rolex, a Prada or Louboutin fan could quickly pick out the imitation.

That got me thinking about people, especially those of us who claim to be Christians. We’ve all known church attenders who parroted the right spiritual lingo, i.e. wore the right label, but who didn’t live out the philosophy behind it. Truth be told, we’ve all done it now and then. But just as a child can sense when an adult doesn’t like him, non-Christians know when someone is a “knock-off believer” trying to fake faith.

Scripture indicates that God doesn’t think much of that, which forces me to examine the validity of my own faith in him. Are there parts of it that aren’t genuine? Am I sometimes a phony Christian, acting one way but thinking another? Two-faced behavior like that amounts to a double standard in God’s opinion and is a serious offense to him. It’s important for me to examine my thoughts and actions carefully and rout out any inconsistencies. I absolutely want to be the genuine article.

Although Nate loved his Rolex, several years after he received it, he put it in a drawer. Believing it was too ostentatious as we struggled to put food on our family table, he felt uncomfortable wearing it and went back to his Walmart watch.

And after that, if any Rolex-wearer noticed his timepiece was low-cost or low-class, that was just fine with him.

“Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.” (James 3:13)

Nate loved his stainless steel Rolex watch and got an uptick of pleasure whenever he checked the time. He wore it on his right wrist rather than the traditional left, but one day I noticed he wasn’t wearing it at all. When I asked why, he said, “Its at Peacock’s, being cleaned.”

Several weeks after that, his wrist was still empty. When I asked about it he said, “I have it, and its working fine. But I’ve been wondering if I should wear it again.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, these days it seems ostentatious,” he said.

I was surprised. He’d loved receiving it, wearing it, setting it on the dresser every night. Then why the change of heart? Since he’d started wearing it, much had happened in the real estate and legal worlds, and his thriving business had shriveled to nothing because of governmental law changes. The fact that his partner had suffered a debilitating stroke and never returned to work didn’t help either. His rapidly rising income had plummeted, and we were scrimping at home. When Nate looked at the big picture, a Rolex was out of place.

Of course I was well acquainted with our over-the-cliff financial picture, but I hadn’t put all the pieces together. The radical changes affected all of us, but they were upsetting Nate the most. His business persona was being overhauled, his finances ruined, his work hours increased and his tension level off the charts.

One night as we settled into bed, I told him I was impressed with his decision to let the Rolex go. It had been thrilling to receive it and satisfying to wear it, but gradually he saw it as inappropriate, and I saw that as wisdom. Although Nate would not have said he’d been humbled by his losses, that’s how I saw it. And it was good… at least spiritually-speaking. His decision to put the watch in a drawer right then somehow made me love him more.

God was working on Nate and on all of us through the raw circumstances of a business failure. We, his family, didn’t look at it as his personal failure but simply as the demise of a company by way of circumstances he couldn’t control. I wished he could view it that way, but instead he beat himself up and called it a debacle. Part of him never got over it.

Making big money can do funny things to people, and the worst of it is becoming dependent on dollars rather than God. Dollars often grow wings and fly away, because the Lord loves us too much to let us continue believing money-dependency is good.

Nate learned, in a miserable way, that big bucks can disappear, but he also learned that God always remains. After the “fall” and a period of despondency, he joined a church small group, began sharing openly with other men and related to the Sunday sermons in new ways. Although it was a painful reminder of our situation to eat soup for dinner every night for a while, Nate would say after it was all over that he was closer to the Lord and also to me.

Financial deficiencies never entirely disappeared, but Nate’s struggle ended completely on November 3, 2009, financially and in every other way. God had humbled him, and when he deemed the time was right, he lifted him up… way up… to a place where a Rolex isn’t needed.

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.” (1 Peter 5:6)