Day 2959 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 17:5 NIV

Have you ever stopped to wonder why so much gravity is being given to human opinion and preference? I know it's something that we all do as children as we enter our school age years and suddenly find ourselves thrust into a massive new world filled with a whole bunch of new people. Our natural inclination to want to make friends and find those who enjoy being around us and who we enjoy being around begins to take on a greater importance simply because we're not solitary creatures.

We do well in community as in a group or class or clique we find a greater mix of abilities and strengths and knowledge upon which we can rely and lean and even utilize in order to build one another up. We look for those whom we can trust to help us as we hope they know that they can trust us to help them. We find and then foster and then further these friendships as we believe they offer us a good reward and a solid assurance of mutual edification.

But as we continue growing, we find that the requirements become a little more involved and important. Our friends begin making choices and picking paths and finding interests that may vary from our own. And as our lives begin diverging, we still try to hold tight those bonds we've forged because they mean a lot to us. But in order to do so, in order to continue making friends and finding companions, we begin finding these expectations that must be met and satisfied for us to be deemed acceptable.

And at some point, once we've grown and matured and found our own feet and located our inner courage that allows us to walk our own path, the pressure found in peer pressure ought to begin to wane. It's something that should be left to the past like training wheels and fear of girls and worrying about how goofy you look at school dances and trying to remember the teacher's apple so that you stay on her good side and get the good grades that keep your parents proud.

Yet sadly, in this world we're watching be created, peer pressure is almost worse as an adult than it was as kids. All of these social structures and societal expectations and political parties that aren't anything like a party are in no way as important as so many have made them out to be. In fact, it's all a massive distraction built upon misconception and encouraged by human delusion. It's as if adulthood has turned out to be nothing more than the playground bullying that we knew and fought through growing up.

Why has society not grown up?

Well, because of what we talked about yesterday. There's this incredibly powerful lie going around that has millions of people convinced that we must all live our lives in such a way that appeases those who pretend to be in power. We're told that we have to share certain messages, believe specific ideologies and embrace all manner of human preference as we’re expected bow down to the almighty opinions of those around us.

And though it's all nothing but hogwash, it's believed in and agreed upon by so many that those rare few who refuse to lower themselves back down to the days of taking the long way to school just to avoid the bully so that you can keep your lunch money are seen as extremists and hatemongers and radicalized bigots whose sole purpose for existence is the undermining of this concept of being on the "right side of" something or other.

My point is that the world still lives as if the sides being chosen, as in a game of dodgeball, are of such importance that we mustn't take lightly the demands and expectations set forth which must be met and appeased in order for us to be welcomed into the fold of whatever group is claiming to be on the right side of whatever argument is on the table at the time.

The world is placing such pressure on everyone to conform, to blend in, to agree and aggregate into the accepted norms that someone else must have decided upon without our input. We're being handed new expectations nearly every day, and though it's all meaningless as they're all nothing but worthless and derogatory and degrading and deceptive, so many are falling for it that those who don't are sticking out so far that they're the first nails to be hammered.

You can't refuse. You can't disagree. You can't forget to use the right hashtags and share the right picture and say the right things. You can't not donate your money or your time or your attention or your voice to the motives and movements that are being perpetuated by the darkness of human arrogance and pride. You can't not post something in agreement with the current popular opinion without being labeled and ridiculed and left facing excommunication from the community.

Come June, every logo must be draped in rainbow colors. Make sure to post your solid black square. Tune into the awards show so that you've got something to talk about with those who only talk about mainstream entertainment. Pick a favorite team. But this shirt and support this cause. Dilute yourself in whatever way possible so that your pesky personal beliefs, virtues and morals don't shine forth and disrupt the delightful delusion that has many convinced that their opinions are somehow truths that everyone has to agree with.

Whenever something bad happens, blame someone. Whenever you see something you disagree with, don't ignore it, scroll past it or ask yourself why you care so much about something so petty and inconsequential; unleash a verbal word salad against the disgusting human who dared share an opinion different from your own. Break friendships, burn bridges, blow up your belief system so that you have more time and more room and more energy to devote to whatever cause you're trying to appease in order to avoid the hatred and persecution that await any and all who won't.

Can't we see the foolishness in it all? Can we not understand the gross distractions being levied against us in this life? Can we not realize that giving so much time and attention to humanity for the sole purpose of getting by and getting along will only continue to cost more and more as they win more and more and take more and more and want more and more? Can we not understand that at some point, we really can't serve two masters?

And can we not understand that living to serve or please or pacify the human population will demand our relinquishing of our relationship with God?

Make no mistake, our Savior who is the Christ, who has never been exactly well received (you know, that whole mocking and beating and extreme torture and torment upon the cross thing), is still not at all welcome in this world. This fact is becoming increasingly obvious with each passing day.

And so, at some point not at all in the all too distant future, in order to remain in good standing among those who would still love to kill our Friend all over again, this warped and wicked world will begin demanding that we either hide our faith so as to not bother them with it, or to simply forfeit it so that they know we’ll do whatever it takes to make them happy.

So, where do we draw the line? Not in some playground sense where we're picking a fight or trying to avoid one. But where do we draw the line for ourselves over which we refuse to tread? When will we refuse to go any further down the road of living to make people like us just so they don't hate us? It’s as if that horrifying word still sends shivers up our spines every time it’s uttered as being hated is one of our greatest fears as it runs against that instinctual yearning for compassion and companionship.

But friends, we can only give away so much in exchange for that continued acceptance before we've lost it all.

And if you don't believe me, just look at the state of our world. So many people have no idea as to who they are, why they're here, what they're doing or where all of this is leading. Humanity has lost itself in the searching and striving to satisfy itself. So many have given away so much expecting to find love and acceptance in the end, but they're only giving it to those who are in no way any different than they are.

We are all humans. All of us are flesh and bone, blood and breath, living yet ever closer to death. All of us have issues and problems and perplexities and fears and doubts and weaknesses and worries. All of us try our best and still amazingly manage to fail miserably. All of us can do so much more, so much better, but we so often choose to forfeit our potential. All of us are human.

Why then should we live to please those who are as messed up and mixed up and completely incomplete as we are? Why should we spend our time devoting ourselves to pleasing a person, a group, a movement when it's all, when we're all going to be gone someday?

What we need to understand is that, with eternity on the table, this fleeting life and whatever is popular in it at the moment is of such little importance that it oughtn't be given any more than a few seconds of our time, if that. Now, I'm not in any way saying that there aren't important things going on, things that need us to be aware and informed and decided. But we need to keep our minds first and foremost fixed on our Father, because while we're here for a time, that time is nearing its end.

And if we waste enough of the little time we've remaining worrying about things that don't matter and trying to please people whose opinions don't matter, then we'll have failed to forge the one relationship with the One person with the one opinion that will decide our eternal destination.

We can't keep concerning ourselves about a false display of strength or power or authority being displayed by those who are no different than us. We need to concern ourselves only with living to honor and glorify and praise the One who created us, as He is the One with the strength and the power and the authority to also destroy us. And if we live giving all of our worship to a wicked world, then destruction is exactly what we're due.

And it’s exactly what we’ll find.

Friends, just choose your own life. Not based on what's popular or being sold as important at the moment. Not based on what party your coworkers expect you to vote for. Not based on making sure you look acceptable on social media. Not based on anything other than what you yourself truly believe to be most important. But do it for you knowing that, in the end, the outcome will be carried by only you.

We will each face our own judgement, and being found insufficient in His judgement carries with it a sentence far more miserable than being hated by humans.

Truth is that we can survive human hatred and exclusion and resentment. We can make it. We can weather it. Even if it means our earthly exit, we can still live through it. But only if we begin living to please only the One who can bridge that gap between this world and the next. And only if we live in fear of Him alone. But to do that, we must be willing to boldly go against the current of a society streaming toward damnation.

Just know that humans can do nothing for us, and in the end, they can take nothing from us. So do not give to humanity what belongs to and is deserved by only God. If we place our trust in human strength, we will be limited to human ability. And while human ability is somehow sufficient in this world, in His court, our ability and intellect and strength and popularity mean absolutely nothing. So they're probably not the things we should focus on with whatever little time we have left to figure this out and get it right.

Please don’t bet your life on human approval being enough to save you. I promise it isn’t, because the Bible tells us that there is only one Name given to mankind by which we must be saved. It’s not Steve or Susan. Eric or Ellen, Donald or Joe. It’s Jesus. And if we’re not leaning fully on Him, then we’re clearly not fully in Him. And if we’re not in Christ, we’ve got some serious problems coming our way.

Problems no human can withstand.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold