Adrien, 2 years old. This is not a cow.

Make-believe is imagining to oneself in play. Legends are pretended history. Some say all historians write legends. ” Let’s make people believe us! ” Some say all journalists do not write legends. “If people don’t believe journalism – that is their problem.” Fiction and Historical Fiction are different from History and are false by comparison. Roman and Greek goddesses, chess players, toy soldiers, building block airplanes or digital editing, train sets, films, myths, stories, theater appearances, operas, costumes, make-up, paintings. “This is not a pipe” said French painter, Magritte. There is falsehood and truth, most agree. Some say photography and eye-witness reports are truth. Jesus said everything is a lie. He is the truth.

Jesus was in a boat during a storm. The sailors said, “This is dangerous”. Jesus said, “With the maker of the world in the boat this is not dangerous”. It makes a difference who defines legends, who defines falsehood, who defines risk. 

“Let’s make people believe us.” But why should people believe anybody? Am I omniscient (all knowing), infallible (unable to fail), omnipresent (in all places), omnipotent (all powerful), everlasting (never ending)? I imagine a lot about who I am. Identity is quite important for credibility. That is why I write CV s. That is why I write bibliographies and do not plagiarize the works of others. I do not pretend or make people believe lies. I am authentic, or so I say.

Non-fiction causes us to hope. Children pretend because they hope to be different than children. And they will be someday. People use imagination to plan and tell their dreams to others. If they are serious about what they want to do, they hope others will tell them what to do. I may also imagine someone else will do what I cannot or will not do. I hire someone and create a job based on imagination, images, instruction.

The employee begins confused, revolts against the justice of it, and creates an injustice out of it, then tolerates it and finally produces it, conforms to the task, accepts it. Then he wills for it to be so. “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is Christ who is at work in you both to will and to do according to his good pleasure”. St-Paul.

First, God wills salvation for me. He modifies my will so i will believe his will is good for me. 

Second, he does his good pleasure and then I know he is good. “Christ plays in 10,000 places,” says author and pastor Eugene Peterson, quoting his favorite line of poetry.

This entry is getting long but bear with me.

Christ sought my heart so I could worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.

To seek the heart of others I make Christ-disciples of non-worshippers.  It is a hard place to be … among non-worshippers. I could say,”Their problem is that they don’t adore God.” And it would be. It would not be my problem. I can make believe a non-worshipper is interested. When the non-worshipper begins to worship, the belief will have taken over. I will continue in make-believe, a hard place to be, if all around me are cynics. Pretending the report about God is good is the same as  God being good, if both are true. “Contempt of life is contemptible” Proverbs 18.3. “A healthy spirit conquers adversity, but what can you do when the spirit is crushed?” Proverbs 18.14. God has demonstrated hospitality, compassion, empathy, loyalty, rescue, sacrifice and love to me. I can be an ambassador of God but not God. I can tell the eye-witness report about him but I cannot be there to have seen him. I can feel his presence like as if there is a curtain between us. His voice is familiar and he seemed to know me before I knew him.