Day 3303 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Proverbs 14:12 NIV

Idolizing the ideas and ideals of individuals is as ironically idiotic as one might imagine.

Because humanity has a vast history of being utterly mistaken. Indeed, we’re standing inside a sea of selfish souls starving themselves for service to selves as if elves alive only to bake blasphemous idols inside these little trees called you and me as if we’re actually the ones who have any idea as to what we’re doing. Problem is we don’t. Not even close. We each have a past behind us filled with more mistakes than anything else. But we can’t seem to see them can we?

Because we don’t want to walk His road.

Don’t want the agony of steps taken in such utter misery as made reality because of our many mistaken moments mistaking freedom for this fellowship with the filth we’ve found to be fun. We don’t want the weight of a cross draped across our backs, grinding us deeper into despair with every single step. We don’t want to look up and see the hill upon which we’re to leave. Despise any mention of the tomb’s invitation. Deny every demand of what He deserves for having done what He did.

We don’t see any point in it, no profit from it, no purpose to it, no promise of it being anything other than what our blinded eyes have us seeing and thus still so sadly believing.

Yes, seeing is believing. We live so much by sight that faith is simply a fight into a light we can’t allow ourselves to love as it demands we lose all this darkness that doesn’t disclose our dirty deeds done as sheep led unto the slaughter alongside this rampant laughter of these familiar millions who are so equally blinded by pride and profit. Familiar because their faces are ours, their stories the same, their pasts prove replicas of our own. A collective of chaos is this community that’s come to see that the only death which needs to die is our respect of reason.

We don’t have any real use for reason anymore. Never really did. We’ve other things upon which to lean. Lessons learned by others giving them the power to provide for us the way in which they think we should live here in the days and years since their stumbling through these seasons we’re just now coming to. Plans plotted out for a public aimed at a proven profit that’s been provided a meaning we can’t dare to question. Dreams we desire as if life is just a vision always waiting in the distance for us to reach it.

Opinions inventing idols of every individual idea, of every individual’s ideal.

That’s all we know to look for anymore. All we care to look to anymore. What does someone else think I should do? What do I want to do, need to do to get me through to those many dreams I’ve had for my life, my time? Which way can I go that offers the greatest outcome with the least effort, least expectation? Or are we even worried about lesser expectations anymore? Do we ever really concern ourselves about ignoring expectations? How can we say we ignore expectations when it’s to this world that we incessantly look for either ideas or rather validation of our own?

You see, that’s why we’re told blatantly to refuse the ease of walking by sight. Our sight sucks! We can see but only so far, and even that distance is otherwise diluted and distracted by dreams and desires. No, often in life we can see nothing but our plans, see past nothing that promises profit or popularity. That’s why I hate opinions so much. They’re just us telling ourselves that we know what we’re doing, where we’re going, how to get there and what to expect upon arrival.

And wouldn’t you know it but whenever we’re allowed to make the plans and plans the paths, nothing is ever really seen that might speak to the dangers or distractions that might lie in wait. No, it seems that when our personal benefit is presumed, well, we’ve nothing to worry about right? If we know that the up ahead will be fun, feel good, find for us friends and followers, allow us to follow the friends we’ve made with this world of fools, well then we’re good to go.

Plunge headlong into a life lived listening to every voice but that of reason.

There is no reason to be found inside our opinions. They’re always blinded by glitter and gold, this gluttony of greed that has us convinced that what we need most in life is to need more of what we want of life. Comfort, contentment, ease, lack of effort, every reason to avoid conflict, everyone saying we’re doing a good job of being their very best friend. We see all the above as if trophies won or waiting for our win. Walking always as if we can actually see what’s coming simply because we think we see where we’re going.

But you see, an opinion is but a seeming of something, a self-perceived understanding, a self standing upon their own understanding of what they can only think they know. And yes, we do indeed live as if we know it all. Such is all but the standard accomplishment already achieved by most, but yet still a shared outlook as well. To know and be known. Everyone all around knowing so much that none make any mistakes. Miraculous! Nobody makes any mistakes, gets anything wrong, does anything we shouldn’t, achieves anything that turns out to be less than impressive and thus not worth the work.

No, we’re a people of such utter perfection that we can trust ourselves to know the direction. To places we’ve already been. Toward things we’ve already found. Right back to the life we’ve always lived within this way this world tells us it should go. Yes, we do indeed know how to best live this life best, simply because we think we can actually know what’s best having never at all seen much of anything at all.

How can we know the best there is when we’re not done yet? Why is that we assume every outcome when there’s yet to have been a crossing of a single finish line in life? Oh, you have found some finish lines in the form of goals achieved and dreams realized? How do you know they were worth more than what you didn’t try for? How do you know that that time you spent wasn’t only stolen from a path toward a better promise, since you didn’t know to look for it?

Indeed, how can we dare allow ourselves to assume we know the best way to go when we can all collectively look back upon a past that proves we’ve never known what we think we know today?

That’s the gravity of making mistakes: We don’t know we’ve made them until we realize we could have, and thus should have maybe done things differently. Hindsight and whatnot. But, then again, hindsight is only a symptom of those freaks willing to consider that they could have done better. And that’s a hard thing to think about among this place that tells us all that life and truth and love and reason and even these days reality are all so entirely subjective that we’re to spend our lives subjecting our lives to only ourselves and this selfishness that needs to die every single day.

But it doesn’t. Because it can’t. Because we just can’t let it list toward life support. Because if we did die to all this selfishness inside, well, we might instantaneously slam face-first into the realization of every finish line we didn’t cross as a result of running only the wrong race in the wrong direction. And that would be terribly tragic to this ego that’s driving us home.

Wherever home may be, whatever home may be, whenever home may be there if we ever decide to retire from trying for more of what this world says we should have.

Indeed, that’s yet another problem we have when living by sight in this world of such wicked blindness. The problem is that in this world, you can always find someone to agree with your opinion. You can always find someone to agree that something you enjoy is harmless for you to do. You can find someone to justify your desire to hate or harm. You can wake up every single day and seek out, fairly easily, someone who will look you right in the face and lie to you by telling you that you should live your life today doing only what you want to do today.

Because this world is just that filled with bankrupt souls ready and willing to sell themselves for the attention of being asked their opinion. But the issue is that while we can indeed find plenty of people to make us feel justified in our doing whatever we desire to do, to be, to believe, in the end we alone will be left to pay the cost. We will be left to shoulder the weight of our cross. We will be all alone, left lonely and lost before the One who carried our cross.

And so maybe we shouldn’t put so much faith in this world being there to lead us the right direction. Because again, half will say something is right, half will say it isn’t. Some will say we’re in the right, some will say not quite. But the biggest problem is that our ego always wants us to be right, to be justified, to be validated, vindicated in whatever we choose to be. But friends, if we go into anything seeking only justification, we will find just that. Because we want just that. And when pride wants something bad enough, there’s not a risk or warning loud enough to keep us from it.

Just look behind you!

Just look around you. Just look inside of you, inside the choices you’re making, the words you’re saying, the life you’re living. Who’s living it? Who’s making your choices? Who’s controlling what you’re telling yourself that you see? What do you see that’s in any way any different from what the rest of this world is chasing? You see, that’s one of my biggest concerns inside this life lived through cell phones and virtual existences. We’re only plunging ourselves deeper into the sea of those who live like they can see everything, and are more than willing to cheer us on in our search for our share of what everyone else sees as good enough.

And we eat it up, this opportunity at endless knowledge and platforms promising to make us known. Eat it up as if a banquet fit for kings. Social media feeds feeding this narcissistic need for a life to live without having to go through the miserable trouble of living our own. Just watch the news at night and they'll give you your thoughts. Watch the latest hit show alongside millions tuning into the same wasted time assuming again safety in numbers. Listen to a song that talks about who knows what just to numb the mundanity of the quiet that has the audacity to allow the warning bells to be heard for once.

Indeed, it's like we've all become physically allergic to quiet!

We can't stand having to sit with ourselves, our thoughts, our fears, our failures. No, hand me a phone and let me see what some celebrity had for dinner. Let me tell someone else my opinion on the latest headline. Let me jump into a comment section battle over what some politician said. Let me make sure someone else has the chance to see things from my perspective so that my perspective finds the support it needs to stand as the assumption I know it to be.

Yes, let me live my life safeguarding my sight so that my ideas and their ideals aren’t proven as pitiable and pathetic as they’ve always been.

Why does it matter?

How much longer can we afford to chase what we think we see? How much longer can we spend our lives protecting ourselves from facing that fact we’ve been wrong? That’s the problem we’re warned against here. We think what we see makes sense, seems right, feels safe. What if it isn’t? What we’re biased? What if we’re bent? What if we are indeed as spiritually broken and eternally blinded as we’ve never admitted before? Is that not the reason we first cried out to Christ, that we hit this place where we couldn’t stand ourselves anymore? That we finally realized everything we thought we saw, thought was safe only turned out to be a suffering so miserable that we ached to leave it all behind?

That’s why I hate opinions so much. My opinions only shift my focus from what God said to what I think. Why does what I think matter? God's Word is the rock by which I'll be judged! Why then worry so much about what I think? Why lean so heavily on what I think I see when I know I’ve been prone to blindness before? Why should what I think I see be allowed to remain the main direction I go when I know where it’s led me in the past?

That’s the only place our opinions, our assumptions, our insane leaning upon our own understanding can get us. Just back to a repeat of the mistakes we’ve already made. Why? Because so long as we lean on our sight, our strength, ourselves, we won’t lean on Christ. Indeed, we will never look to Jesus if we think we see still the path to the freedom we’ve always thought we’ve already felt. But friends, there is a freedom so far beyond what we’re capable of that it puts everything we’ve ever known, ever seen, ever been to shame.

But we can’t see Him. We can’t see His promises. We can’t see His purpose as it works through hardship and hassle to strengthen us for the battles still to come. We cannot find our way to that place we’ve never been along that path we’ve never wanted to take in a direction that’s everything we’ve been taught to avoid in life. We just can’t. Thankfully, the cross proves that He gets that, that He gets us.

When will we?

When will we agree to the accepting of our limitations in sight, in strength, in understanding, in ability, in everything? Walk by faith, not by sight. Why? Because we can’t see what He already knows, and so how can we know what we think we see? Friends, we’ve seen almost all of life entirely wrong. We’ve chased after so many worthless priorities, achieved so many forgotten victories, accomplished a great many goals that obviously weren’t enough to leave us feeling content in life. Why keep looking for more of what we already have, what we’ve already held?

Why risk being wrong again? Especially knowing that we don’t know how many days we have left to burn. I just don’t want to waste any more of them stuck inside the limits of what I think I know, what I think I see, what I think is good enough.

My good enough will prove not enough. Already has. I just don’t want our good enough to be the death of us. And yet the cross proves it will. So just how much longer will we stop short of His glory by living for only what we can see? How much longer will we agree to miss His purpose while chasing instead our passions? How much longer can we afford to assume we can find the way when He is the way, and after all, at one time we saw fit to deny Him so violently that we held that hammer. Maybe all we should look for now is a reason to lay it down and let Him do the seeing from now on.

Because while we can find every reason to keep walking by sight, and too a world ready to justify such stupidity, we can’t afford to live as if God won’t judge our choices. Because He will. And I just think that’s all the reason we need to let Him take the lead.

We’ve already proven where our sight, our strength, our understanding can get us. Not sure why anyone wouldn’t want more than this death we’ve managed to find.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold