Voices in My Head (The Rick Lee James Podcast) Episode 620: Beyond the Image

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad that you're here with me again this week for the podcast. This is going to be a fairly quick episode. I know a lot of them are anymore, but it's before work. I have just a few quiet moments in my kitchen and had some things on my mind I wanted to share. I do want to let you all know that we did just record last night a new episode of Truth, Justice, and the Way, Superman and Spirituality podcast that I do with my friend Dr. David Dahl. His great new book is getting really good reviews, Accessorized Bible, and I'm hoping that everybody has a chance to check that out and read it. It's really good. If you want to follow our Superman and Spirituality podcast, you can find that, I believe the address is, I really should look this up before I start recording, but I believe it's truthmandpodcast.substack.com, and you can find it everywhere that you listen to a podcast. Just look up Truth, Justice, and the Way. But if you want to be a part of the conversation, join the chat threads, things like that, you can join us on Substack, and that's where it releases first. So just wanted to make you aware of that. Well, um, this week, um, I wanted to talk about something a lot of people are reacting to. It's an image that was posted online. I believe it was an AI-generated picture of Donald Trump depicted in a Christ-like way healing someone. And depending on who you ask, it was offensive, or symbolic, or it was just politics as usual. And I'll be honest, I understand why that picture bothered people. It bothered me, especially when I first saw it. But like so many things our president does, it's tacky, it's distasteful, it's blasphemous, and most of his supporters don't care and just continue on with it. So it's the kind of thing that there's so much outrage all the time and so many things you can constantly be mad at. I'm trying to pace myself and not allow myself to be taken in when the zone is flooded by things that are intended to offend and intended to make it difficult to have good and generous conversations. So this week I wanted to talk about that picture And I understand why it's bothering people. And anytime someone places themselves in the role of Jesus, even symbolically, it should hit a nerve for us. But I want to suggest that that might not be the biggest issue. Evangelicals by and large have been telling Jesus that he is the chosen one, the Messiah, this Cyrus-type messianic figure in some ways for so long now. Who can blame him for starting to think that he was? Rick Lee James, and posting a picture like that. And I think even he was surprised by the evangelical backlash to it. But, but I think there's something deeper. We might be focusing on the wrong thing because Christians have misrepresented Jesus long before AI ever existed. The real question to me isn't, was that image appropriate? Obviously it wasn't. But the real question is, are we living in ways that reflect the heart of Jesus. Because Jesus didn't say they will know you are my followers by the images you post online. He said they will know you are Christians by your love. That's what Scripture tells us. So when you read the Gospels, Jesus consistently brings the focus back to very real, very concrete things. That being a follower of his is about feeding the hungry. It's about caring for the poor. It's about welcoming the stranger and healing the sick. And Matthew 25 makes that unmistakably clear, that we are to see Jesus in others. I was hungry and you gave me food, or I was hungry and you did not give me food, and whatever you did or did not do to the least of these, you've done it unto me. We've talked about that a number of times on this podcast. And that is where Jesus always seems to locate himself. Not with the people in power, not in an image, but among the vulnerable. Always with vulnerable people. That is who Jesus is. That's where he tells us he will be found. And what many of us aren't hearing, and this is where I guess I want to be careful but honest, I think many of us, including myself, I have to put myself in it, We live inside this media ecosystem that highlights some things and it quietly ignores some other things. So depending on where you get your news, and I really try to be centrist about this and look at things on both sides, but even when you do that, there are some things that are said out loud and some things that are loudly ignored, so to speak. So here's a few realities depending on where you get your news. You might not be hearing about things such as there have been significant cuts proposed and enacted to SNAP, the food assistance program. Cuts large enough that millions of people, including children, are losing access to food support. And there have been reductions to WIC, which supports mothers and young children, and this is affecting access to basic nutrition like fruits and vegetables. And with prices being so high, many people can't afford There are stricter work requirements which have been added to assistance programs, making it harder for some of the most vulnerable people— low-wage workers, even some veterans, and even caregivers— to qualify for the assistance that is needed. I see this every day at the hospital. There are sometimes people who live alone, who are infirm and are not able to work, and who also desperately need that assistance., and we are constantly trying to give the assistance as much as we can to people in need, and yet the need is so great. I don't think churches are really trying that hard to help out, and then they say it's not the government's place to help out, so what we have is a lot of people who are not being helped out. And so indeed Jesus is going hungry, and indeed Jesus is going without a place to to live. I can't tell you the number of homeless people I see every day in hospital beds, and sometimes it's the only place where they can get help that is needed. At the same time, we're seeing large tax cuts that disproportionately benefit higher-income households while support systems for the poor are being reduced. Budgets continue to reflect increased military spending alongside cuts to programs that help people meet basic needs. Alongside programs that feed people. Um, and in some cases there's even been less tracking of food and hunger and food insecurity, which makes it harder to see the full scope of the problem that is there. So, I'm not saying this for any sort of political agenda other than the Kingdom of God, which is its own politic. I don't say this to endorse any candidate. You might notice I don't endorse politicians. Of any kind. I offer criticism that I hope is constructive and helpful, almost like when as a songwriter other songwriters critique my writing to help it be better. But I never endorse, because anytime we join the church with any political body, we get what's happening right now. The church has told the Republican side that you are our people for so long, but now the Church has the stink of everything bad that is happening right now, even with a person claiming to be the Messiah through art posted online. So scripture tells us in Philippians 2, Jesus did not grasp for power, he emptied himself. This kenosis happened, this emptying. Jesus took on the nature of a servant. So anytime we see power being used to elevate self rather than to serve others, it should at least cause us to pause and ask, "Is this the way of Jesus, or is this the way Jesus resisted?" So yes, images matter, words matter, symbols matter, but they are not the truest measure of faith. Real religion is not that way. The kind that Jesus seeks— to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God— The real scandal in all this isn't that someone created an AI image of themselves as a messiah-type figure. The real scandal is when we ignore the places Jesus told us he would actually be: among the hungry, among the poor, among the sick, among the forgotten. So maybe a challenge for us this week, maybe we could ask this question: are we more upset about how Jesus Jesus is portrayed in an image, or are we upset about whether people made in the image of God are being cared for or not being cared for? Because if we miss that, we might be missing Jesus himself, and we don't want to do that. We want to continue loving people in bipartisan ways, in nonpartisan ways, Everyone deserves love. Even people speaking blasphemy. They are still people made in the image of God. And somehow we don't want to annihilate them. We want them to be redeemed. And the best way to do that is not by sanctifying every move that they do and saying, "Oh, that was from God. God blesses this. You're like a messiah figure." It also is to say, "Thus saith the Lord." the Lord. And rather than preachers going out and playing golf with Pharaoh, sometimes Moses has to confront. And pastors have to do things like that. Unfortunately, we aren't called to popularity contests, we're called to faithfulness. So I hope that was an encouragement to you. If not, that's okay. I want to thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. These are just some of the voices in my head this week. Things I'm thinking about as I'm living in the same world that you are, wrestling with questions. I know that at the same time we talk about this, not everybody hears everything that's going on, not everybody sees everything that's going on. My friend Matt Lewis reminded us through a post this morning on Twitter, or maybe it was yesterday, he said, Trump is becoming a laughingstock, but if you watch Fox News, and I check on it every day, you have no idea. So if that's all you watch, you'll think everything, including Iran, is going swell. This is part of the reason Trump can never go below a certain point. This is why there's a stark dichotomy between Fox News boomers and everyone else who listens to Pod and watches YouTube. So it's interesting hearing that perspective, and I know it could be the same said on the other side as well. But it's just another point about the echo chambers that we get into. If I'm not careful, the other side can be my echo chamber. And I want to make sure that I am listening to Jesus more than I am to any other source. But I also don't want to be blind. Ignorance is a choice. And a lack of intellectualism is a choice. And it's actually a moral choice to choose to be ignorant and in the blind of things that that we know are happening in the world is a moral choice. So that's all, sermon over. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. I gotta go to work. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful day. God bless you.