Travelling through Turkey one day, I encountered a fascinating bazaar selling diverse products. One store boldly paraded a strange sign which made me laugh. This sign offered “genuine fake watches” for sale, featuring designer watch logos like Rolex, Omega, Cartier and others.
Murray Smith
The claim of ‘genuine fake’ brands on offer was at least somewhat honest – they weren’t brazenly pitching ‘knock-off look-a-likes’ as the real thing.
Not so, visiting another store in China. I was shoulder tapped by a salesperson soliciting buyers for ‘quality brands’ of watches they had available. Here again the world’s elite designer watches were being offered at a fraction of the price you would expect to pay. Curious, I was ushered covertly into the back part of the store. Hushed and ‘discreet’ staff were evasive under pressure about admitting their watches were not authentic products. Acknowledging they were passing off cheap fake copies as real Rolex or Tissot watches, could lead to consequences. Superficially the watches looked authentic but any similarity ended there.
Chinese markets. Photo: Hong Son, pexels.com
Put simply, however you slice or dice it, the question of ‘fake or real’ matters. I once purchased incredibly realistic ‘outdoor plants’ made of plastic. They passed for and looked just like the real thing – but their guarantee meant nothing. UV exposure slowly turned them shocking blue. Life offers us a multitude of fake stuff that only pretends to be ‘real’. People only counterfeit something that is valuable and special. Nobody bothers to counterfeit brown paper bags.
The lesson from “genuine fake watches” is that there’s no middle ground. They’ll either be genuine, or fake. With issues of ‘faith’ it’s no different. What you believe will either be true or false. Many counterfeit beliefs and religions are deceiving and taking in sincere people, leading them into error.
So… in the area of faith, can you be sure you’re on the right path and aren’t being taken in or misled ? It’s simple really and all revolves around the central figure of Christian faith… Jesus Christ Himself. Jesus’ affirmed that he was a man whose identity was God, claiming to be ‘the way, the truth, and the life’- the light of the world, the only hope of salvation and One who alone forgives our sins.
C.S. Lewis wrote “a man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Life’s most important choice is whether we’ll tolerate something not real or build life on truth – the genuine, solid foundation of Jesus.
Street with Shops in Sirince Village, Turkey. Photo: Mustafa Kalkan, pexels.com
