The thing is, all of us are put into a difficult situation when we’re compelled to thank (or condemn) an entity in which people are actively giving themselves. Frankly, I’m not thankful for what a bunch of liberal organizations have done and are doing in this country. I’m not thankful for MoveOn, Occupy, Planned Parenthood, or SEIU, to name a few. However, there are those who could offer a similar list of conservative leaning organizations for which they are not thankful either. They might list Cato, Heritage, Military, Tea, and the great Satan, Fox News, which I would counter with CNN.
The problem we’re having is that we’ve been induced to bypass or forego the people of those organizations and to, instead, have a relationship with a media representation, a facsimile, a fake, and that’s easy to support or to get mad at, depending upon our beliefs and desires. That’s not always wrong, but it is always wrong to stuff all of the people of those organizations into a facsimile because we remove them from our heart, where Jesus lives and does His best work. That’s going to hurt us and keep us from the pleasure of His life and evidence found there—Christ in us.
Frankly, I sometimes feel more like Satan than Jesus when it comes to people I don’t like or agree with, and I don’t even know them!
Let me put it this way. I do not know George Soros, Al Sharpton, Harry Reid, or Edward Snowden, but each of them draws a response from my flesh—sometimes a powerful one. I do not know them, but I think I do—that is a facsimile relationship. I have too many facsimile relationships that are sometimes more powerful than the ones right in front of me, or the ones I have in my own home. And I want those! I can get used to living from the power of a facsimile relationship, confusing it as most authentic to my heart. After all, it lights me up! Maybe anger becomes a more common feeling, a more common motivator than love. When that happens, love becomes the put on, a fake, and anger becomes the genuine. That’s the proof that I’m living more from facsimile relationships than from the real deal.
To see if you’ve fallen to facsimile relationships and the power found in the fake, let me ask you: Do you know Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, George Bush, or either of the Koch brothers? Or how about a soldier?
Look, I am thankful that my country’s military is the strongest and best in the world because I believe that what’s behind it and what motivates it offers a better hope for liberty and prosperity than any other military. I shudder to think what would happen if our country’s influence and military support in the world were to fall from the top. Does anyone believe that the void created would be better filled by Russia or China?
There’s my conservative viewpoint. Did you miss it? Probably not. That aside, I know more than a few soldiers who got caught up in less than beautifully motivated efforts in foreign lands. It is what it is. And that’s why not everyone easily thanks organizations or the military. I know.
But what we’re left with are the men and women who were involved in those efforts. Frankly, we need them and they need us. We need them to become bigger in our hearts than the media-fed facsimile offered to us instead. Double frankly, I need MoveOn and Occupy loonies and they need me. I know a few, and I’m focused upon their hearts, which can take effort because I’ve got to climb through the stuff I don’t like to what I do like. So I’m focused upon their hearts because that’s where authenticity is, that’s where reality is—for me and for them—that is where Christ is looking, and that is what is normal and healthy for me, too. It’s genuine. It’s my view and it’s your view, and that’s how life works for us, and how we avoid the fake-out of facsimile love and hate.
(This is a transcript of yesterday’s video, “Love & Hate In A Facsimile World,” and is for those who might rather read than watch. To see the video, click http://youtu.be/V7Yz4Vu_FRI, or simply scroll down on my blog.)
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