Day 3115 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

James 1:17 KJV

There's an undeniable discrepancy displayed across humanity in that we know of good yet are not good.

Can’t we see the craziness in these misconceptions we’ve created? Don’t we realize the foolishness made manifest only because of us? See, we've an idea as to what makes something good or someone seem good or help someone feel good. We seem to understand the concepts of goodness, of kindness, of compassion, of mercy and grace and a better place. But how can this be?

How can we be a people so clearly so far from good and yet somehow know that good is so good that even though we can’t be it that even still it must exist somewhere?

Peculiar.

I know that as we've gotten older with an intense lack of evidence of our having grown up because we've aged in a place that won't mature past adolescent angst and anger and arrogance, so too have we found ourselves with a similar mindset as that shown amongst the masses. We, like they, think we know everything there is to know and yet don't show any proof that we've perfected anything.

We carry ourselves as if each of us is the best of us, and yet we've all alike lived pasts which effortlessly prove contradictory to our facades. We speak with human eloquence thinking that our words sounding wise will cover up the fact that we know ourselves otherwise. We look down on everyone that passes by and yet have times when we can't look in the mirror because we know the shame that will be staring back at us should we.

Indeed, we think highly of ourselves, monumentally so, but when pressed for a reason, we've none to offer.

And yet, all of humanity doesn't see the discrepancy. We don’t see that undeniable demands such as repentance are impossible for us to have imagines as we’re a people who only know to deny any wrongs done. We don’t realize that a people who enjoy lies for the comfort they offer cannot therefore be the one who have the ability or authority to author truth. We can’t understand what we can’t understand because of what we refuse to try to understand.

Seriously, do we see things such as truth or love as being so trivial and insignificant that they can be entrusted to a people who’ve only shown themselves imperfect at best? Can forgiveness be a construct considered by the same minds that are so lost that in order to think themselves somehow found demands everything be seen as subjective?

Can a people who now think truth something up for debate be the same who once managed to not need debate or discourse in order to decide upon how to define anything we now know of to be good without our being close to it?

So you see, because we won't see these many inconsistencies nor can we see the danger posed to our souls for all eternity. We walk around acting as if we're something we know we're not, that we know we’ve not been nor can ever be, and within that ability to convince ourselves we've no inability, we're oddly enough unable to realize that our insufficiency shows we're walking evidence of God's existence.

Strange concept isn’t it? Let me try to prove it:

Where does compassion come from? How do we understand forgiveness? What is love if we're a people who both know of it and simple it is yet can't seem to perfect it despite its undeniable simplicity? How can we know mercy exists when we've been a people who've become like a place that doesn't know how to show grace to one another?

Did it all just get passed down from those who've gone before us? Did a group of people centuries, millennia ago just gather together in order to sit down and define what we all now know instinctively? Did somebody long ago manage to brainstorm all of the incredible concepts so perfect that we'd be born both knowing them fully and still manage to live without showing some of them even partially?

How could a person or group or delegation come up with something, or in this case many things, that everyone who’d come after them would simply know without having to be taught or even think too hard about them in order to simply know them enough to know there’s a perfect example of them that none of us could manage to find or become or be despite our knowing that they could be perfect outside our obvious inability to perfect them?

Did come congregation create all these ideas so wonderful only to pass them down to future generations that would botch them so beautifully that now all we touch breaks or blows up? Can humans have created what humans have destroyed? Can our current aversion to the truth possibly come from minds related to those who made it? Do we really think ourselves so advanced that our imperfections now prove us perfect?

Or are we just blowing the same smoke that’s been billowing since before we ourselves began fanning the flames of our downfall?

Can we not see that our inconsistencies testify against us having been the ones who designed anything that actually worked? How can a people prone to mood swings and violence create patience and pacificity? How can a people who live in denial be those who defined truth into existence? How can the fallen have created something that will never falter or fail?

Doesn’t make sense, because it’s not feasible.

No, Scripture points out the obvious toward which we try to remain oblivious. Romans 3:10-12 says that, "As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one."

Even Christ himself responds in rebuke to having been called good in Matthew 19:17. "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God."

We ourselves know that we're not anything close to what we pretend to be. When even Jesus Christ points to God as the only good in existence, we find that humility is a necessity for goodness to manifest because we all know of Him to be good, yet even He says that there is One even better. And in that we find that humility underscores goodness.

And please tell me that we can all agree that humility is not a trait perfected by humanity. We're as far from humble as it gets, and because of that fact, that truth, so too are we as far from good as it gets.

Just look around.

We see the obvious signs of a people imperfect, but what I think we're not seeing through our blinded eyes is that our lack of goodness doesn't mean goodness doesn't exist. If anything it proves it, just proves that we didn't create it. If we can look at anything and instinctively understand that it's wrong, then somewhere inside we must know of at least the difference between what we see and what is right. If we can hear a word and feel a pulling back as if we didn't want to hear it, then we must that not everything everyone says is right or true.

Indeed, if we can all agree that something such as murder is wrong, then how can we assume that a people who are seeing such violent crime only rise in occurrence could have at one time been the ones who made all things we now know of as good? How can humans have created kindness or compassion or righteousness if today we see little signs of them to be seen?

And if we've not seeing something, if we’ve not been something, if we’ve not gone somewhere then how can we claim to know the way back?

All that humanity knows of goodness is that it exists. But then we get lost in trying to figure out its existence. How? Why? When did it start and from where did it come? That's where we get ourselves tripped up because we want so desperately to take credit for everything that we must seek to find a way to paint ourselves into the picture and onto the throne. But that's the problem, He's not giving it up.

You see, goodness cannot come from a people who change, because then goodness could change. Truth cannot be authored by a people with varying opinions and outlooks as the truth would then be debatable, deniable, avoidable as it would be subjective, something unto each to determine for themselves without any possible universality or consensus.

Kindness clearly cannot come from a people who've made a place continuing to divide itself asunder along lines of petty divides apparently too important to cross. Righteousness cannot be the result of a culture that can’t come close to getting its act together in light of endless wickedness and moral decay. Forgiveness cannot have manifest inside the same minds that prefer to hold grudges for the glory we hope to gain in the end.

No, love cannot be the result of a people who are better at hating one another. Mercy isn't the product of a society built on petty judgment and continual insincerity. Grace can't come from a place that would just as soon reject and refuse than to potentially lose the chance to retain grandeur.

So you see, everything we are is evidence of God, just the wrong way around. Because everything are, which is everything we know we shouldn't be shows that what we've become isn't how we began. How can it be considering we understand the idea of goodness but don't show it all that often if at all? Is it not only because we began with something good inside that we've since given away?

Is not the fact that we’ve walked in shadows proof that there’s a light shining on us from somewhere other than us?

Indeed, God created us in His image to be His people, a people as we discussed yesterday who are strange and peculiar and different and therefore indifferent to the demands of a world we were never meant to remain in nor seek to settle among. And because we were made in God's image, because we know that truth exists outside the lies we prefer, because we know there's an immovable line between right and wrong found by our having tried in vain to move it, well friends, we've found evidence of God!

Because all that we know can't have come from us because we're not enough to have been the ones who defined the truth we now try to deny, who found the line we wanted to move without the ability to shift it, who imagined grace without the ability to see that we need it, who perfected righteousness and then never again chose to come close.

No, our failures are evidence of God's perfection.

Every time we stumble we realize that it was only realized because we knew we should have and could have done better. Every wrong turn noticed reminds us that we had the choice to do what was right. Every filthy word caught by our own ears after having slipped from our own lips prove that we know better than to lower ourselves to the standards of a world without standards that taught us such foulness.

Every sin for which we find or feel the scar tells us that we've harmed what He made to be perfect.

And while our imperfections have been taught to us as things to hide, deny, debate or decry, doing so only continues to lead us in the direction of the world around us, which clearly isn't what it was made to be. This place is burning itself to the ground! So how dare we think ourselves the same who can save it, change it, help it or heal it.

This is bigger than us because everything is bigger than us, but it takes humility to admit that. And again, it also takes humility to create kindness, especially the kind offered unto a people who He knew would kill His attempt to save them from themselves.

You see, that's the beauty in all this. It's something we've touched on over the past few days. We've given up but God never did. We hid, He won't. We ran, He refuses. We failed, and yet we can only see that because He never has.

We have these understandings of things such as goodness and kindness and grace not because we made them but because they were made by the same God who made us. He made us in His image, and He's the one who also made all things good. How do I know? Because goodness doesn't change. Truth doesn't change. Love never loses its power. Mercy and grace are needed all up in this place.

That's how I know. Because we've done this our way and we all see now that our way has only broken, bent, blown everything apart. So how can we be the ones who built it?

No, this is all God. Anything we happen to know about anything anywhere close to good, anything we accidentally do that's anywhere close to decent, any time we stumble into doing something right, it's definitely not because of our own doing. It can only be because He led us there, and He can only do that when we're not trying to do it our way.

Friends, God doesn't change, doesn't quit, doesn't falter or fall or fail to be faithful. We do. We have. We will. And because we're not perfect, well then there must be a perfection somewhere by which we've always known to compare ourselves in order to realize our inability to be it with the hopeful inspiration to try harder next time.

The fact is that humanity shifts, alters, falls down and rolls around in the many mindless messes we make. And that any of us can say with any certainty that anything we've done ought not have been done testifies that we know better. And my point is how can we know better when we've proven ourselves a people unwilling to learn, averse to change, led astray by lies and ultimately just disinterested in growth?

We are evidence of God, and while yes, for all the wrong reasons, evidence still the same. It's time we stop trying to pretend we're something we know we're not and instead accept that the only reason we know we're not what we try to pretend to be is that He made us with the knowledge of the better we've never been.

Everything good comes from God, not from a people who've never done much if anything decent. We're fallen failures waiting to finally fall apart. The quicker we admit that, accept that, the quicker we finally realize it's always been Him holding us together just long enough to realize that we've been tearing ourselves apart.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold