An Optional Illusion
A car salesman in our area was the master of “malapropisms” which are words or phrases accidentally substituted for similar words or phrases; his favorite singer was Barbara “Streisman.” One time he claimed to a potential buyer that a car’s windshield had excellent “perforated vision”, as opposed to peripheral vision. And in the dead of winter, when he rolled down the window of a snow-covered car and found a perfect sheet of ice in place of a window; he said, “Look! An optional illusion!”.
I use that last malapropism in my own life when I find myself justifying apathetic or "un-Christlike" behavior in me. I question whether I am being real or if I am living in the illusion of saying I am a follower of Jesus at those times when I don’t participate in His Kingdom by being His hands and feet on earth.
For example, when I merely think about the plight of the less fortunate but don’t contribute to lessen their hardship, I am living the illusion of being a Christ-follower. I excuse my apathy or laziness with the question: How could my small amount of donations of food, water, clothing or time spent with a loved one or with a person in prison make a difference?
Other times, I justify negative thoughts about a person who wronged me, hurt my feelings or whom I just don’t like. While no person knows my thoughts, I know that my thoughts might not be any different than those of a person who doesn’t know Jesus. Justifying those negative responses is an “optional illusion” of denying a loving God who will hold me accountable for my mean thinking.
I am not the Christ-follower that I think I am when I choose a path of optional actions: what I should, can, or want to do for Him.
When I think of these “optional illusions” in my own faith, I acknowledge that I deprive my own soul of the blessing that the Creator God had intended for everyone who serves Him through our actions on this Earth.
When I am attentive to the Holy Spirit moving in my heart and respond by deciding to purposefully and prayerfully ask God how I can be REAL by serving, I am shown either how to specifically help... or I am led to pray for those who are better able to help: first-responders, missionaries, doctors, teachers and even unbelievers who might find the Love of Christ through their work. In that way I am opting into the real “...Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.”
Jesus' words as recorded in Matthew 25:35-36 point me again and again to REAL living, rather than living by the host of other options that often distract me and are less than the kind of life that Christ calls me to:
I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
