Day 2979 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Revelation 3:17 NIV

Perspective does not define reality. It merely threatens to distort it just long enough to cause us to live life within the shadows of our self-perceived perfection.

It’s amazing how quickly that fact gets lost behind our normal efforts to maintain the masquerade behind which we hide. We’ve such a tremendous ability to focus in on our self-perceived wealth and worth only possible in light of our lack of ability to acknowledge our weakness. And whilst incredible for our ego, that diluted state of unreality can very quickly cause us to lose sight of things like truth and real life and the responsibility we have to blend the two into a life of purpose and meaning. When we live only according to things like our opinions and personal preferences, well, we’re obviously going to miss out on a whole half of life.

We miss out on the true condition of both our souls and of those still lost in places from which we’ve sought to break away. We lose sight of the opportunities we’ve been given and will be given to help make things better by pointing to the One who makes all things good. We fail to improve, both inwardly and outwardly, as well as both personally and communally. We simply end up losing ourselves within this selfish assumption that we’re good enough, have it all figured out and simply need to bide our time until our reward for being so awesome finally shows up.

But maybe the most embarrassing thing that results from our efforts to focus only the perspectives that please our selfish preferences is that we forget that the only ones we’re managing to fool is ourselves. Granted, we may convince a few others that we’re better than we really are. We might be able to pull the wool over the eyes of some in our efforts to display an image of perfection which only hides the flaws and failures that all of us have and have made.

But in the end, that’s tragically all we can accomplish in living a lie that seeks only to convince both ourselves and those around us that we are something that we’re in no way anywhere close to actually being. We’re actors. We’re paid performers. We’re smoke and mirrors and lights and cameras and makeup and make believe. We’re ghosts drifting aimlessly through a life of delusion thinking that we’re accomplishing something that makes us special by refusing to accomplish anything at all.

It’s a truly sad state of existence wherein our greatest hope is to find a way to make others think as highly of us as we do of ourselves. We’ve such a gross ambition to hold to haughty opinions of ourselves that I guess reality and truth are indeed quite cumbersome, too heavy in fact to be considered as lies are the only means by which we can feed our selfish delusions of grandeur that distract us from the numerous failures and flaws that we’ve lost the courage to face and fix.

We just don’t want to be honest, and honestly, the way of life taught and sought in this place makes that choice entirely possible if not prosperous.

However, all it’s really amounted to down here is something akin to some endless stage production. Here there is so little reality that those living by it are made to feel as if they’re foolish. Such a hatred of truth that those choosing to adhere to it are ushered unto the outskirts where their weird beliefs in things like responsibility and consequence are no longer detrimental to the goings on of those going under. Yes, sadly, the world has chosen to hold to the path of least resistance, even though it obviously means least substance as well.

There’s just something about our ego that refuses reality in such a violent manner that we’ve left no choice other than to craft lies and believe in falsehood and convince ourselves that we’re bearers of a flawless moral character as it’s only down that path that we’re able to avoid the truth that simply hurts too much to ever admit. Rather than humble ourselves to honesty, we hold to this resilient resistance to all things responsible and real. All because it’s simply too comfortable to keep playing the role that has the world cheering us on.

What’s the end game though? What’s the grand prize to be won in a race of idiocy? What permanent gain do we expect to glean from a life spent living a lie?

Surely we have to realize that, at some point, the truth is going to come out. All of our lies and distractions and this perceived plethora of evidence proffered to prove our perfection will eventually prove only perfectly unable to verify the validity of our version of ourselves. We can only run from reality for so long before we find ourselves slamming painfully into the wall that never agreed to move out of the way of our selfish idealism.

Have we existed among a broken mindset for so long that we too have become incapable of rationality? Sadly, I think that may well be the case. We find ourselves momentarily stuck in a place where foolishness and frivolity are by and large the only way of life to be valued. There’s such an interest and intrigue in insanity that we find a world teetering on the edge of complete moral collapse. People are literally inventing new ways to be worse every single day.

And the crowds that keep forming to watch the show do so only as they seek to satisfy their desire for the entertainment value of the novelty offered in the latest display of incredibly depraved and ultimately wicked immorality, indecency, insufficiency and incompetence.

Sadly, that right there is your reward. That’s what so many are living to seek. That’s the grand prize that many are hoping to win in this life. It’s approval. It’s appreciation. It’s this sense of acceptance only offered because the world has settled for such a sick and twisted kind of humor. It’s a social trophy handed to those who excel and exceed in helping please those who enjoy watching the continuation of the moral decay which continues to shock and awe the hungry crowds watching on. It’s merely a sense of belonging that so many desire.

But, in order to get it, we must do one of two things. 1. We can tell the world how perfect we are. We can display this image of moral, physical, spiritual or financial superiority that convinces everyone we’re worth their time and attention. Or 2. We can lower ourselves to a level just beneath the already disgusting levels previously reached by those who are willing to do anything just depraved enough to become famous. We can take it one step further into the filth than the last who ventured there before us.

Now obviously, the first is far more common. In fact, the second is saved for only those without the means or motivation to craft a persona that pleases the crowd. So the first, the effort spent convincing people that we’re flawless and fabulous, is the obviously easier path as all it really takes is some paint, a few spare dollars and just enough time to rehearse all the lines so that we know we won’t mess up and make ourselves look like the fools we truly are.

Again I ask though, what’s the point in it all? What’s the meaning of living a life without meaning? What do we get out of living a lie that forces us to ignore our issues, leaving them to fester under the surface for what may well prove all of eternity?

And there is it, that pesky reminder of the bigger picture. The realization that life as we know it is not the culmination of life as it was designed. There is more to be seen than what our eyes have witnessed. There’s more to be done that what we’ve failed to do well. There’s more to accomplish than pleasing people for a short period before we’re gone and forgotten. And there’s more to worry about than how great our lives are and how many people we can get to agree.

The biggest problem in all of our focusing on our perspectives, which are so dangerously distracted and diluted by selfishness and laziness and complacency and fear and weakness and a horrid unwillingness to do anything about any of it, is that there’s simply no fooling the One who made us as He is also the One who has witnessed our every mistake, heard our every foul word and can recount our every misstep taken down the paths of pitiful preference and perversion that we’ve travelled in search of a way to make life’s meaning mean what we’d prefer.

Truth is that, at the end of the day, what others think of us holds so little meaning that I think we all know that’s not what’s driving our choice to continue living in all this deception. We know that worldly acclaim usually amounts to a mere 15 minutes of fame. We know that eventually the spot lights turn off and the crowds go home and the billboards are plastered over with the next hit show. So what’s the real purpose in all of our efforts spent to convince everyone that we’re something we’re not?

Well, if we were to be honest, which I know is hard, the purpose is that we don’t like what we’ve become. We don’t like what the mirror insists on showing us. We don’t enjoy sitting with the mistakes and failures we’ve found in our lives spent living only to serve ourselves. Simply put, we know deep down that we’re morally bankrupt without God in our lives, and so we simply resort to writing checks we know we can’t cash hoping that we can do so long enough or hard enough or just enough to forget all the things we’ve allowed to remain undone, unaddressed, unchanged.

But through it all, all the things we seek to avoid are still there. They’re still as clear and evident and egregious as ever. Now yeah, they might be hidden pretty well. They might be buried beneath decades of deception. They could be contained within the idols we’ve chosen to serve. They might have been swept under every rug we could possibly find. But the fact is that they’re still there. Our weaknesses, our failures, our mistakes, our sins and our responsibility to acknowledge them do not disappear simply because we stop looking. They just rot.

So it’s no wonder that there seems this drastic division between factions of society. One half is seemingly living in the lap of luxury thanks to their perfection and talent and ability and success while the other half exists in an entirely different world where the skies are perpetually cloudy and the successes are all but non-existent.

But in the end, it’s all a lie. It’s all humanity’s effort to avoid responsibility. It’s all this story that we’re trying to write making ourselves feel better about not being who we know we should be. It’s our attempt to stay distracted from our lack of urgency given to things like repentance and salvation. It’s our continued striving away from the Author of life, just keeping that peddle to the floor praying we can outrun His expectations.

The bottom line is that we can say whatever we want, but who we are is simply who we are. That’s the easy danger of dishonesty. It’s able to be whatever we need. It’s able to offer us the exact escape that we seek to help avoid our obvious need to change and try harder to do better. It’s the perfect fit for all the holes we don’t want to patch and improve. It’s just what the doctor ordered, problem is that we ain’t doctors, just dorks. Just distracted and deceived by the deception of our desires.

Friends, we can keep running and keep pretending and keep attempting to convince everyone that we are without weakness. But the fact is that reality will still be there standing beside the God that defines it. And no matter how hard we try, we will not convince Him that we’ve not failed Him. And as a result, we will not coax Him into agreeing that we don’t deserve all that we know we’ve earned for all that we know we’ve done and failed to do.

Our only hope to avoid what we deserve for all of our obvious mistakes and missteps is to humble ourselves to the honesty needed to help us see beyond what we want to see where we finally accept the truth and agree to do something about who we’ve become. Our only hope is repentance which leads to salvation. We can pretend we don’t need saving, but again, we’re only fooling ourselves if we truly believe that.

Fact is that we clearly cannot help ourselves because we’ll happily find every reason and excuse to not try. But folks, this curtain is closing, and if we’re not ready for what comes next, then we’re going to be destroyed by it. That’s what the truth does. It may be able to be ignored, but it will never prove able to be denied. And if we live avoiding it just long enough, we’ll find ourselves crushed by it rather than saved by it.

And considering what we’ve been told awaits those who refuse to acknowledge God and humble themselves before the cross, I have no idea why we wouldn’t accept the chance to avoid the miserable fall back to reality. In His immense mercy, He has given us the chance to step down off of our pedestals of pride and preference. Don’t make Him knock you off, because that fall back to reality will only hurt worse when sped up by His wrath.

Again, we can say whatever we want to try and prove whatever we’re trying to portray. We can offer up all sorts of evidence that verifies our versions of who we want the world to think we are. We can live our whole lives trying to prove we’re better than we are. But in the end, all that will ever do is prevent us from being who we can still become. And that is the ultimate failure in life.

It’s not falling down or messing up or being imperfect that defines failure. Failure is choosing to settle for less knowing full-well we could be so much more.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold