Day 3076 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Proverbs 13:24 NIV

Leave it to a capsized culture to think themselves able to understand what's only understood when a heart's living right side up.

Seems everything in this world is so inverted that even the very concept of intelligence has been mangled beyond belief. Everywhere you look every single day you see a new reminder of what happens in a place where we only know how to get most everything wrong. And while the reasons and excuses are many, the main issue is quite clear and entirely simple.

We've exchanged the fear of God and a corresponding appreciation for His guidance (albeit wholly confrontational to our lesser settlements) for a version of nearly everything that's far more appeasing to our heartbreaking need for affirmation.

That's a word you see plastered all over the place anymore, affirmation. To affirm is to assert an opinion both strongly and publicly so as to join your voice as another noise confirming or defending your support or approval of something or someone. It's an idea based upon emotional support or encouragement as shown through a clear and concise(?) display of validation, verification, ratification via a public proclamation.

Allow me if you will a single question which I find myself perusing more often as the days grow darker: Why all the need for emotional support and public defense and social validation?

It's likely because I've slowly found myself becoming a quite cantankerous old man despite being in only my mid-thirties, but if we're doing something that demands others agree, does that not merely mean that we're not certain we should be doing whatever it is that we feel the need to have externally justified? Because if we were certain that we were doing the right thing, saying the right thing, believing the right thing, well then, we'd need nobody's agreement.

Instead, our internal, moral, personal foundation would be both certain enough and steady enough to press forward without anyone else having to come alongside in order to steady our ship and ensure we don't sink.

We'd have no fear of sinking as we ourselves resolved to make our own choice, use our own voice, embrace our own responsibility and accept whatever the final cost may prove to be.

But that's not who we've become as a species. We’ve forgotten that God gave us a Spirit which inspires power, love and self-discipline. Rather than be who we were made to be we've chosen to become a people filled with fear as proven by our incessant need to have someone else, preferably many someone else's, speak up to protect us from the meanness of a world we imploded due to our past choices sought only for comfort and pleasure and personal glory.

Rather than accepting personal responsibility for the fact that we alone are living our lives, we've outsourced our courage to a society at this point literally burning itself to the ground. And we wonder why all the insanity is only picking up speed.

Friends, it's blatantly obvious as to why all the nonstop nonsense:

Humanity as a whole has rejected the very idea of discipline, going so far down that rotten road as to deny He who seeks to help save us from ourselves and our rampant selfishness.

We're a people without discipline, both internally and externally, and as a result we're building a way of life completely void of anything close to what anyone could legitimately consider morals, values, principles or even common decency. None of those things are even considered by the masses anymore. Not even afterthoughts. So many have grown to see such things as so limiting that they must be found expendable so that they not hinder our enjoyment of the messes we keep making.

In short, we’re children who never grew up but instead chose only to grow to hate the Father who simply wants more for us than the disaster we’ve never learned to agree we’ve made of this life.

I'm not a parent, at this point don't know if that one's in this story I'm living. But I have parents. I know other people who are parents. I get the gist of being a parent. And yet within my clearly limited understanding of what it is to be a parent, I at least understand that a parent loves their child enough to help them grow and mature and learn along the way the kind of life that will continue guiding said child along a safe and productive and prosperous path as they get older.

Why is such a love needed for a child as they learn and grow and approach the point where they start making their own choices and living their own lives and finding their own consequences along the way? Have we forgotten the dumb things we did a kids? Kids are more than happy playing with fire, sticking stuff in light sockets, leaving their room a mess, talking to strangers, not eating their vegetables and “forgetting” their homework.

If left to their own devices, a child would watch cartoons from dawn to dusk, draw dinosaurs all over every wall in the house, never wash their hands (or anything else for that matter) and exist on the candy, candy cane, candy corn and syrup diet that they learned from Chef Buddy the elf.

Hopefully, and I’ve some definite cause for doubt, but hopefully every adult sees the harm in all the above. Hopefully.

I don't know of many parents who stand politely to the side happily cheering them on when their child is making a mistake or a creating a mess or throwing a fit. I don't know of a parent who encourages their child to talk back, to refuse their responsibilities, to mock the parent's advice, to actively seek out a plan or path that will undoubtedly bring them harm. Don't know of a single parent who would encourage their child to hurt themselves or others.

But yet, we hate that God is the epitome of a loving parent who is simply trying to lead us toward and along a path that leads us to everlasting life, simply because He doesn't encourage the things that He knows will bring us only shame or pain or regret or, in the end, a forwarding address to the gates of hell.

We talked a bit yesterday about God's discipline and why we tend to hate it so much. In quick summation, it's pretty much simply because we've become so weak and watered down that we only like the things that make us feel good. And, as Hebrews 12:11 points out, "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful." And we just hate pain in every possible form, fashion and finding.

Hate it so much we can no longer allow ourselves to see the reason or purpose or point in the idea of discipline even continuing to exist. We'd clearly rather live without having to worry about such a radicalized affront to our comfort. How dare God harsh our happiness in such a violent and uncaring manner?

Because He loves us enough to seek more than our happiness. Because He knows we’re clearly happy living as animals wallowing in filth with a great big smile on our face like a child basking in the glory of a mud puddle.

It's because we know nothing. Nothing of love. Nothing of truth. Nothing of reality. Nothing of responsibility. Nothing of life. We know only to seek what satisfies our desires, and our desires have been taught to us by a world that lost sight of God long ago and has no interest in turning away from the death that delights.

That's why God disciplines us as He does. That's why He took the time and underwent the effort to breathe out the entire Bible to help us learn what the world only wants to forget. That's why He sent Christ to die our death upon our cross to atone for our sins committed only because of our infatuation with the world around us. That's why the Holy Spirit straight smacks us upside our stupid heads so often.

It's because, as Christ himself says in Matthew 10:16, "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves." He knows what this world is, what it's become. He knows the things people are doing in dirty deeds done only in the darkness. He knows that this place will do things to people that shouldn't fall anywhere near the realm of reality or reason. He himself felt every sting of what this world has chosen to be.

He knows the danger of sin as He paid the price it owes. And so He does all He can to protect us from the environment into which we're walking.

We're His people. His kids. His creation. He loves us, but through a love that doesn't exist only to seek our happiness. He loves us in a way that seeks our salvation. Because He knows happiness lasts only a moment, but the hell toward which it can so quickly lead lasts forever. And He simply wants better than damnation for all of us. Even when we don't care to want better for ourselves.

Like I said in today's opening, we're a capsized people living as if we're adrift on an endless sea of success and glory. We're sinking in sin in ways that very few care to consider let alone admit. It's gotten to the point where we're truly walking amongst those "who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."

This place "loves" people by hating them so much that we encourage them to do things that lead to death. We call truth our enemy and lies a friend simply because they make us feel like we're doing nothing wrong so we don't have to change. We mock Christ and use His Name in vain because we know nothing but to be vain. We deny God and yet live in utter anger at Him because He refuses to stop trying to help us stop racing toward a demise we equally deny.

We hate love and love hate, and this horrid mix-up is seen in our music, our movies, our motives, our mindsets. And we pretend to be oblivious to the obvious reasons as to why things are so bad anymore.

Because we hate the One who loves us and love those who hate us.

This world will never call us out, set us straight, try to help. Because nobody cares anymore. Everyone wants only the social trophies being handed out to those who "love" the best. And we love people by telling them that everything they're doing is okay, even though we know better.

When will it stop? Well, sadly, not until He returns. This world will go on hating Him and rejecting Him and living in clear denial of His discipline and in stern opposition to His efforts to discipline. Because that's just not what anyone wants apparently.

Friends, we're living a world that seeks death daily. This is evident in the lack of discipline being displayed in everything happening around us. The lawlessness, the division, the hatred, the persecution, the lies piling up to the sky trying to solidify society's way of life that they think can end well.

We’re amongst children gorging themselves on everything unhealthy and unhelpful. And honestly, because of things like peer pressure and social media and social credit scores, we’re truly at risk of falling in their midst and agreeing to reject the discipline that God gives us that leads us away from the death that sin deserve.

The fact is that God's discipline proves how much He loves us, because it proves He isn't willing to let us settle in this squalor. He wants better, wants us to be better, wants us to be His, not the world's. And He died to make it possible.

What has this world done that deserves our willingness to join hands with those seeking harm for their fellow man? How dare we continue to lower ourselves to the shameful standards of this place with no standards remaining?

A child will eagerly play in traffic, jump off rooftops and eat themselves into a sugar coma if they see fit. So too will we happily do all the things that only bring us pain. That's why we need advice, not affirmation. We need guidance, not niceness. We need discipline, not desertion. We need love, but not this sickening version the world's selling.

We need God to be the loving Father He is, not the weak idea the world wants Him to be. All of us are in or have been a people foolishly embracing the devil's invite to play as if life's a game. But if we keep playing, we're going to lose. And simply put, God doesn't want that for any of us. And He will do whatever it takes to save us from that eternal defeat.

But we have to learn to unlearn all that this warped place has taught us. Thankfully, He doesn't spare the rod that beats the world out of us. Guess it just comes down to us no longer being the spoiled children we've always been.

His discipline proves that He loves us. But do we love ourselves? That's the question we answer in the choices we make every day. If we do, then we'll appreciate His help in making those choices the best way we can. If we don't, we won't. In the end, the choice is ours, but so too the consequence.

Parents don’t love their kids by agreeing that everything their child wants to do should be done, because that’s not love. It’s negligence. Friends, every good parent's love wants their child to both learn and therefore hopefully avoid the harm of an irresponsible life.

Just like how God loves us.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold