Day 2981 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 John 4:4 NIV

Two letters.

There are quite a few pretty insignificant things in life. Of all of them, it seems that two buttons clicked upon a keyboard or two thumb taps on a cell phone screen cannot possibly mean much if anything. It does seem all but impossible that something as small as two letters could ever matter. I mean, a side-by-side combination of two letters is barely enough to form a word! And even those words made up of two letters like of, as, is, on, if, it, well they’re only accessories. They don’t really even define anything. They’re just sort of there to make our language flow smoothly and sound nice.

So how is it that something so small and seemingly insignificant can hold any kind of power, let alone a power that is able to alter life?

Would you believe me if I told you that two letters defines many of the tunnels through which we crawl and scrape and suffer and stumble and somehow still seek to strive? What if I told you that two letters was enough to distinguish the end of a matter from its beginning? What if two measly little letters contained the entirety of the journey from when we start to the distant finish line beyond which our hopes reside? Sound crazy?

Well, two letters is literally the only visible difference between the words victim and victor. Yet, within those two little letters resides an entirely different outlook, a different perspective, a radically different mindset that has the ability to entirely alter our lives. Not bad for two little letters, huh?

This is yet another topic that’s been kind of kindling inside my mind for some time. Much of life anymore, or at least so much of how so many choose to live it is stuck in this victim mindset. So many people walk around just accepting that they’re victims of their circumstances, of their surroundings, of their upbringing, of their generation. People have simply settled for assuming that they’re nothing but mere products of external input with little to no opportunity to alter that outcome.

It’s truly amazing what we can convince ourselves of when we really put our minds to it. And we can accomplish even more when one of our main desires is to have others feel sorry for us so that we don’t feel quite so sorry for feeling so sorry for ourselves. It’s one of the saddest human undertakings possible, and yet, it’s also one of the most common. And I’ve a feeling that it’s not changing anytime soon as there are times coming in which people will most certainly feel undeserving of what they experience.

So, in a way I guess, much of humanity is simply preparing for what’s still to come, because I think we all know deep down that the things we’ve done that ought not have been done bring with them a date with a kind of reckoning we’ve not reckoned worth hindering our haughtiness nor reigning in our revelry.

Truth be told, this is something that all of us do far more often than we likely consider. How often do you find yourself upset or angry because of being faced with something you feel you don’t deserve to have deal with? How often do you allow your situations and circumstances to lead you into a kind of frustration or aggravation or dejection that seems inescapable, however short or insignificant they may in fact be? How many times do we hate something merely for the opportunity to feel as though our lives are unfair?

How much time do we give to worrying about what’s fair, about what we deserve, about what we think we deserve?

Fact of the matter is that many, if not in fact most of the hardships and hassles within our lives are indeed a result of our own actions or inactions. Many of the miserable days we endure are only miserable because we seek to make them so. Many of the trials through which we tread are only there because we just love making our lives as difficult, complex and complicated as humanly possible.

Now we probably don’t see it that way. We don’t want to see it that way. Seeing it that way would pretty much annihilate that pity card we love playing. And so we ignore the role we play in driving this train into the tunnels where the light leaves and the hope follows with it. We deny that we have any part in the situations in which we find ourselves. We refuse to accept that we could do something, change something, let go of something that would help us avoid many of the hassles we hate having.

But it’s not really even a personal choice anymore. It’s gone so far that the whole social system is set up in such a way that offers us the ready option to choose to do something stupid with a built in excuse that makes it seem okay. Even our language has been hijacked to help us remain convinced that we’re victims of life’s circumstances. And when we go to such lengths to create words that help define problems that we’ve created and allowed to remain, I don’t know but that there isn’t a basement to which we can descend that’s low enough to appease our unwillingness.

Instead of acknowledging a continued series of poor choices made without interest in changing them, we say someone’s addicted. Rather than holding someone accountable for their lack of interest in putting forth effort, we just say that they’re shy. Can’t say we’re lazy, we’re prone to being overworked and overwhelmed and need more rest as a result. We’re not gluttons, just foodies. Not immoral, simply products of a rapidly transforming generation that’s not yet worked out all the kinks. Not sinners, just lost. Not weak, just scared. Not unwilling, just unable.

Like I said, amazing the lengths to which we can go in order to paint ourselves in this light that makes us appear as though we’re off the hook for the things we’ve done. Can’t be our fault, has to be the cause and effect of something or someone around us somewhere.

Why are we so happy to paint ourselves as innocent products of something else? Why do we try so hard to come up with ways to avoid our responsibility for having chosen the paths that led us the places that we don’t want to be? Why can we not just admit that we screwed up, got it wrong, zigged when we should have zagged, taken that left when we should have gone right?

Why? Because that’s hard. Honesty is hard. Truth is hard. So hard in fact that, catch this, we say it hurts. The truth hurts. It’s painful. It injures us. The truth inflicts harm. Oh how sad a creation we’ve become when the truth is enough to cause pain.

Why is that? Well, because we’re victims. We’re results. We’re mere products of things that have unfortunately happened to us. We are the innocent victims of circumstances far beyond our control. Not because that hogwash is true, but simply because we think that it somehow lets us off the hook and frees us from ever having to answer for the choices we’ve made that have led us where we are.

But there’s one glaring issue with that assumption: God knows better. He’s seen our every move made in the wrong direction. And even worse, He knows our hearts, and so He knows we’ve chosen the paths we’ve walked upon. He knows the reasons that we’ve done all the foolish things we’ve done. He knows the motives that motivated us to choose other things instead of Him. And worst of all, He Himself defines responsibility, and so our efforts to avoid it simply by saying it’s unfair will prove entirely futile.

Yet, still we try. We wake up every day seeking every chance to blame someone or something for things we ourselves choose to do, to say, to be, to believe. We drift through life making choices seeking a way to avoid the consequences they hold. We remain adamant to feel sorry for ourselves, and so we cling to this idea that tells us that life is simply unfair, and that while sweethearts such as ourselves truly deserve something better, the world around us just isn’t easy.

Please allow me a brief tissue break…

Okay. Tears wiped, back to work.

When is it that we agreed to forgo our identity in exchange for this saddened image of inability? When did we agree to approach life waiting for it to simply hand us everything we want? When did we allow God to become a being that exists only to take away all the hard days and scary times? When did life become all about us and how unfair we think it all is? Might it be all summed up in this one simple question that I doubt many can honestly consider:

Who are we to determine what’s fair?

You want fair, look at the cross. You want equality, enter the tomb. You just want a fair shake, an equal chance, a justified outcome? No, I don’t think we do. I know we don’t. Because what’s truly fair is not at all who we’ve truly been. We’ve not lived treating God fairly. We’ve not given Christ the praise and honor and glory He so fully deserves. We’ve not treated His creation with dignity or responsibility. We’ve not treated one another kindly or with compassion.

And yet we want life to be nothing but comfortable and easy? When did we earn that?

We haven’t. We can’t. We’ve proven that. We prove it every time that we allow our circumstances to dictate our reactions. We prove it every day that we throw away because a few moments weren’t up to our liking. We prove just how pitiful and foolish we are every single time that we go through something hard or painful with this anger inside telling us that we don’t deserve to have to do so.

Friends, God made us for so much more than what we’ve so arrogantly chosen to become. He didn’t make us to break every time we’re beaten and battered by life. He didn’t make us to be pushed and shoved into molding to the desires of the world around us. He didn’t design us to emulate and duplicate the tragic outlook upon life held by so many who think everything is unfair.

He made us to be victors, not victims. And speaking from personal experience, I freely admit that I’ve chosen the wrong side of that two-letter difference far more times than I can recall at this moment. Every bad thing that’s happened to me involved me. Every mistake I’ve made, I made. Every bad word that slipped past my lips began in my heart. Every time I’ve looked down upon someone or toward something that I shouldn’t have, I’m the one who did so. I can’t put that on anyone else.

Because, while putting that on someone else may allow me to feel innocent in the matter, it forces me to agree to be a victim of something that I had a role in causing. And if I, if we keep causing our own troubles and issues and problems and failures but only blame someone or something else so that we don’t have to take responsibility, then we’ll never know responsibility. And if we never know responsibility, then we’ll never know life.

Life isn’t this carefree circus where nothing matters and it’s all going to go just perfect. It’s a mess, but friends, it’s a mess we tend to create. And seeing it any other way only keeps us lost, confused, disappointed, dejected, jaded and inevitably on the losing side of every battle we’re still to face.

We’re not mere products of external circumstances or influences or experiences. We’re the culmination of every choice made every moment of every day that’s been written and lived thus far. Sure, we do have things happen to us that we wouldn’t choose and that we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy. But even then, we still choose how we respond. So no matter what, we’ve played a part in every moment of this story. And if hasn’t gone like we wanted it to go, well, that’s likely because we didn’t choose to respond to things the best way we could have, or because we didn’t choose the things we should have.

The bottom line is that all this victim stuff doesn’t really help us. It only keeps us beaten down in this place where we think we can’t do anything about anything. That couldn’t be further from the truth. No, we don’t have to fight back. We don’t have to fight to do better. We don’t have to take up our crosses and agree to join this battle fighting the good fight for our faith. But if we choose not to, then it will only be because we chose not to. Not because it was hard, but because we weren’t. Not because it was scary, but because we were afraid.

And not because life won’t be challenging, but simply because we’re not up to being challenged.

This world wants to live as victims of life. But as victims of life, death is the only escape. As victors over life, life is only the beginning. We choose what we let get us down and how long we stay there. There is no way around that. We either agree to stay in the valleys of misery carved by our own foolishness or we embrace the effort required to climb out of them. Either way, the choice is ours and we are making it every single day.

And that’s the whole point in all this. We all make choices, some are good, most aren’t. But, make no mistake, nobody forces us to do anything. Again, the evil in this world and the people living their lives under its control may in fact do things to us. But still, they only best us if we agree to be the victim. Life will have hardship, but it only bests us if we agree to be beaten. We will make more mistakes, but they only have the power to make us hide if we agree that they can have that power.

It’s all a choice, but we need to start making those choices with a better understanding of who we are, and even more so, who we’re called to be. God didn’t make us to be victims of life. He made us two letters different. And so, whatever we do, whatever we go through, whatever we’re faced with brings with it the responsibility to either rise above it or to let it sink us. And that difference is what’s held in the two little letters that separate victim and victor.

One is how we were made. The other is what we often choose to be. Just remember that how God made us is still who we can be. We can face life unashamed and unafraid, no matter how it goes or how it feels. We can rise above the waves that are rising against us. We can trample on our foes. But not if we agree to be their victims. Please choose wisely in this my friends. Because while only two letters different, the difference it makes is as massive as the difference between life and death.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold