I’ve always had
an internal debate regarding how much junk I can stand to hang around before I
stop being able to differentiate the good stuff from the bad. And is it ever
worth it? How much soggy literature do you read before you lose the temperament
that aspires to the higher, harder, richer material. How much junk food can you
eat before it’s all you crave? How many lies can you read before you start to
mix them up with the truth? It’s all good and well to say “I just read that
book for a lark” or “I just wanted to nosh” or “I was just doing research”…and
all that may be true. But will it eventually effect you?
Well I suppose
that depends on the nature of the encounter.
My constitution,
at any rate, is not as strong and solid as I would like it to be and that makes
me vulnerable to counterfeits. Most of us are. But we don’t have to be.
I was recently
made aware of a practical fact that—as it would turn out—is often used as an
illustration for spiritual instruction: that counterfeit money detectors are
trained by touching and handling and looking at real money. tests include counterfeits, yes, but the actual
lesson focuses on the real thing. The illustration is designed to show that
Christians should focus on the real material—scripture, prayer, sermons—rather than
spend our time drinking in misinformation from secular sources.
I did some brief
research and found that this illustration is indeed based on fact. Counterfeit
detection is not a literary compare and contrast paper, it is a matter of
detecting deviations from a known, memorized, and highly particular standard.
I have seen this
illustration criticized as a way of getting Christians to hide in a cave and
never interact with anything they disagree with, or anything which challenges
their faith. Since there are many Christians who do this (retreat into
“Christian cul-de-sacs” and fear all outside contact) I can see the concern. But
I don’t think that is what the illustration really points to. Because that
would certainly not be a life of faith.
This criticism
ignores the fact that, no matter your starting point, if you lose sight of the
original that you know is correct, you aren’t going to remember what it
looks like and you aren’t going to know anything anymore. C.S. Lewis said that,
as a Christian, he often had moods wherein Christianity seemed improbable. But
then again, when he was an atheist, he often had moods in which Christianity
seemed very probable. “The rebellion of your moods against your real
self is going to come anyway,” he states. And if you don’t want to remain a
“creature dithering to and fro” you have to keep your heading. To do that, you
have to remember where you are coming from, where you are going, and why. If
you lose track of either of these, you are going to get utterly lost…or in the
matter of counterfeits, utterly swindled.
So. If a person’s
job is to detect counterfeits they are no doubt going to encounter counterfeits
ALL THE TIME. Not only that, but the greater one’s expertise, the likelier one
is to encounter some very, very good counterfeits wherein the legitimate
features are mixed in so-nearly-perfectly with the illegitimate that it would
be easy to be confused. How to keep from being fooled?
By keeping eyes on
the real stuff all the while. Calibrate to the original. All the time. Every
day. And by not feeding on a diet of the fakes, because those are going to show
up frequently regardless.
The only reason
to fear encountering the fakes is if we are uncertain what the original looks
like. If you find yourself confused about the original when dealing with a
copy, that is when you have put yourself in danger. From experience I know that
ending up in that situation is not, as some would have it, the business of
learning and growing. It is decidedly the opposite. It is the business of
unlearning all functional points of reference. It means real and fake cease to
have meaning, nothing can be distinguished between them, and no choices can be
made regarding them.
The spiritual
application of all this is rather clear, but is no easier for that. It is one
of the hardest things of all. It is discernment, and—above all—it is faith.
“That is why
daily prayer and religious reading and churchgoing are necessary parts of the
Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither
this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must
be fed.” (Mere Christianity)
It isn’t a matter
of what you encounter along the way. It’s a matter of what our meals are made
of. What are we feeding ourselves?
The counterfeit
detector does not have a conniption fit when he encounters false currency—be it
cleverly copied, or just monopoly money—he sets about seeing if it lines up
with what he knows to be correct in all its details. What he certainly
shouldn’t do is try to use the counterfeit to measure the original, nor should
he ever try and make purchases with the counterfeit to see if it will “work.” It’s
his job to expose the counterfeit…not to try and feed himself or his family
with it.
