StriperAddict
Senior Member
There's a good word to be chewed on here. But if this gets political, I'll pull it ... that's not the intent.
Let's each, self included, go deeper ...
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I know there are many people who are anti military, and they are not without reasons. Perhaps last Monday’s Memorial Day in the United States was difficult for you, when the majority of people were honoring soldiers who gave their lives in sacrifice for our country’s freedom, strength and pro-liberty effort around the world. Maybe even now you’re bothered by what I’m writing. I don’t blame you.
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, or Planned Parenthood, 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, and the great Satan, Fox News, which I would counter with CNN. See?
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. 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 template—“I don’t like you!”—because we blockade 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. We are His human meeting places, where the truth and grace of God comes together for the stuff and bother of our days—including and especially for people.
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 Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, or Jerry Nadler, but each of them draws a response from my flesh—sometimes a powerful one. I do not know them, but I think I do—and 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 Robert Mueller, Sean Hannity, Joe Biden, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Or how about a soldier? Got any feelings for them?
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, maybe even vanish. 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. It’s a worldly mess. 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 and are 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 socialist, leftist loony friends 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—even if they don’t know it. I do!
And that is where Christ is looking, and that is what is normal and healthy for me, too. It’s genuine. It’s not that the other stuff doesn’t matter, it’s that something matters MORE.
It’s my view and it’s your view, and that’s how life works for us and how we avoid the lie of fake love and hate.
From Ralph Harris
Let's each, self included, go deeper ...
================
I know there are many people who are anti military, and they are not without reasons. Perhaps last Monday’s Memorial Day in the United States was difficult for you, when the majority of people were honoring soldiers who gave their lives in sacrifice for our country’s freedom, strength and pro-liberty effort around the world. Maybe even now you’re bothered by what I’m writing. I don’t blame you.
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, or Planned Parenthood, 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, and the great Satan, Fox News, which I would counter with CNN. See?
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. 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 template—“I don’t like you!”—because we blockade 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. We are His human meeting places, where the truth and grace of God comes together for the stuff and bother of our days—including and especially for people.
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 Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, or Jerry Nadler, but each of them draws a response from my flesh—sometimes a powerful one. I do not know them, but I think I do—and 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 Robert Mueller, Sean Hannity, Joe Biden, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Or how about a soldier? Got any feelings for them?
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, maybe even vanish. 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. It’s a worldly mess. 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 and are 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 socialist, leftist loony friends 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—even if they don’t know it. I do!
And that is where Christ is looking, and that is what is normal and healthy for me, too. It’s genuine. It’s not that the other stuff doesn’t matter, it’s that something matters MORE.
It’s my view and it’s your view, and that’s how life works for us and how we avoid the lie of fake love and hate.
From Ralph Harris
