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Exchanged Glory II: The OK Stronghold
<page 45>We no longer look to traditional religion to provide the thoughts and emotions we need. A constant supply of new toys, movies, opportunities, etc. does the job more easily.
A lack of conviction makes our hearts vulnerable. We no longer have absolute truth to tell us how to be OK, so we tend to look to people for reassurance.
Our society has learned to take advantage of this. Advertisers blast us with “You will be OK if …” messages to get us to spend freely on the latest popular fads and products. Businesses encourage us to build up our egos through hard work and success. Many of us not only play their games, but we also believe their message. We think we are OK based on what we have and what we do. With no good standard to fall back on, we let all sorts of people climb into our OK Juries.
Many companies constantly change product styles and spend millions on marketing so that last year’s fashions will no longer be the trend. They want to convince us to buy more. They know that we often look for clothes, cars … not because of any need but to fit into the current image of success and fun.
Good looking (and therefore OK) actors and actresses tell us what deodorant will make us smell right, what tooth paste will brighten our smile, and what training equipment will give us the perfect body. Behind it all is the message that if we want to really be OK, we will follow those who have achieved this state.
In the work place, management carefully nurtures the desire for good careers and growing wealth. They learn techniques to motivate us to embrace difficult tasks so we can attain the next raise, promotion, or award. They try to get us to play, “I’ll prove myself,” “Just you wait and see,” and a host of other games in an attempt to get ahead.
All of this produces challenges and rewards that keep us busy. We go from one activity to another, seeking the next rush of fulfillment and excitement, rarely stopping to ask why we are doing it all. Life becomes a string of dreams to chase after and nightmares to avoid.
When our desires are beyond our reach, all is not lost. We can enjoy them vicariously by reading gossip magazines that allow us to taste the thrills and spills of others.
Our culture is skilled in manipulating the OK Stronghold, which has become the nuclear reactor that gives energy to our economy and to our hearts. It directs and empowers us to pursue the activities that make our materialistic society thrive. We no longer look to traditional religion to provide the thoughts and emotions we need. A constant supply of new toys, movies, opportunities, etc. does the job more easily.
<page 46> All of this comes at a price, however. Every time we let someone into our OK Jury, we run the risk that they will use us. Many of them don’t care if they excite Fantasies that can never be fulfilled or if our dreams crash to the ground and morph into Monsters Under our Bed. We have all been burned by abuses of the OK Stronghold, so we look for ways to control it.
One day I was singing along with the radio while I sat in my car. I was in the parking lot of a mall, and one of my daughters was with me. Since she was a self-conscious twelve year old who was afraid her friends might think I was weird, she told me to stop.
I’m still not sure whether I responded out of a desire to teach her, my own defensiveness, or a selfish enjoyment of dramatic statements. For whatever reason, I stepped outside the car and began dancing in the parking lot. I was letting her know that though she might allow a bunch of twelve year olds into her OK Jury, I wasn’t going to allow them into mine.
People will run our lives if we let them. With the OK Stronghold being used to manipulate us, we need a way to keep out those who will hurt us. If we don’t, we run the risk of losing our identity and becoming confused by a thousand contradictory messages.
In previous centuries, people didn’t face the same level of pressure. They weren’t bombarded with TV, radio, newspapers, public schools, the Internet, and our many other forms of communication. They heard a simple message about life from their local traditions and community. A shared religion often gave everyone direction and meaning. Now we take in a constant stream of changing chatter, all at a time when the false god of permissive-love has taken away the tools we need to make sense of it all.
Our hearts feel something called angst. We get lost in a sea of possibilities with little solid ground to stand on. Who are we and what should we do? There are too many choices and too few absolute principles for making firm decisions.
How can we find confidence and stability in the middle of so much uncertainty? One misled approach is called authenticity,[26] which I will explain using the example of a homosexual who comes out of the closet.
The gay man may have suffered angst for years from the contradictory messages of a society that told him to be himself and yet denied him his sexual orientation. While he remained in hiding, he felt the weight of a great internal struggle between the person he felt he was and the person others demanded he be. It seemed like He was being inauthentic – like he was lying to everyone.
When he openly proclaims his homosexuality, he at last feels like he is being authentic. He is defining himself based on what is in his own heart rather than what others think. He stands up to the cruelty of an accusing OK Jury and declares, “I won’t let your opinions hurt me anymore! I am who I say I am!” There is great relief as the condemning judges are thrown out and he no longer lives under their glare.
Being authentic brings a sense of freedom. He grabs the steering wheel of his life and wrestles it from those he doesn’t trust. Unfortunately, he also denies the truth of God.
When New OK Religion is added to authenticity, coming out of the closet becomes more than just a decision for personal identity. The modern definition of tolerance gives the open <page 47>homosexual a sense of righteousness. He is now standing against the cruelty of those who forced him into hiding. He declares that it was wrong for them to chase him into the dark, and he fights for what he feels is honest and nonjudgmental love.
In American culture, tolerance-based authenticity has become the belief that it is an important moral requirement to be true to yourself. It says it is wrong to spend your life trying to be anything else. Doing so is a form of lying and hypocrisy. When society tries to pressure someone into being something they aren’t, society is wrong. We shouldn’t follow outdated traditions and religions. The false god of permissive-love would never deny a person the strong desires and orientations of their heart.
This outlook brings many to a point where they feel that homosexuals have more than just the right to be gay; they also have the responsibility. Honesty about their sexuality exposes the harshness of those who would rob others of their freedoms. If the self-appointed “sexual police” are allowed to speak against someone’s orientation, what will stop them from squelching other areas of self-expression? Religious zealots are seen as a threat to us all.
Tolerance-based authenticity destroys our ability to serve the God of the Bible. While God certainly does not teach cruelty toward those who sin, He does make it clear that sins like homosexuality are cruel misrepresentations of His gift of sexuality. Tolerance-based authenticity misses the mark because it is built on the idea that we can find the truth by searching our hearts rather than studying His revelation. It is a fairytale of our feelings that hides the way to true freedom. We look at our flesh and say, “How could God expect me to be anyone else besides who I am?”
In a great irony of deception, it makes us feel guilty about denying ourselves and obeying Him. For many years, it was a source of nagging guilt for me as I gave up what seemed to be the “real me” in order to hang on to God’s truth.
We need to remember what Jesus said about deception.
The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! (emphasis added)
New OK Religion presents itself as light, but in reality it is darkness. How great is the darkness when we believe it to be right! The very part of our being that God has created to be an eye that will help us see the truth, our conscience, ends up convincing us of the lie.
Having said all of this, let me now almost contradict myself by saying that I do hold to a different kind of authenticity, one based on God’s word and His definition of who we are. I call it “faith-filled authenticity.”
<page 48> It starts with remembering that our hearts are deceptive, and there is no way we can determine our identity on our own. Only God knows us, and only He can tell us who we are. He says that a believer is a new creation in Christ. We are dead to sin and alive to God. When our flesh and evil spirits disagree, they are lying. We are being true to ourselves when we deny the lies and hold to His word.
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. (emphasis added)
This kind of authenticity keeps out not only the false opinions of others but also the failures of our own hearts. It relies on the grace and truth of God to battle the deceptions of the OK Stronghold. It gives us the convictions we need to rebuild our walls (Proverbs 25:28) and to lay new train tracks.
It even works for those individuals who have had the nuclear reactor of the OK Stronghold melt down.
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