Day 3320 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 13:13 NIV

Is a life lived seeing only in hindsight truly even a life lived at all?

Because while it is indeed the only way in which we seem to walk, to work, to want, to waver and wander and wonder why nothing gets better, that should help us see the obviousness of the fact that such a contentment inside such a confusion isn’t all that conducive to really anything at all. How can it be? How can anything improve when built only by the blind? And that’s in no way an affront to those without sight as I fully understand the idea of legitimate disability.

Our problem though is not one of disability but rather a disinterested inability.

We don’t want to see. Don’t want to hear. We’re not interested in understanding either, for all the above might accidentally force us to learn something, and well, we simply hate learning for the humility required. No, we’ve absolutely no willingness to exist outside of us. That’s why so few have faith anywhere near a fractionate percentage of the size of a mustard seed. Can’t accomplish that for it would demand a lowliness that, while seen so sufficiently inside our Savior, it’s just seemingly something we can’t accept for ourselves, from ourselves, in ourselves, of ourselves.

No. Instead we settle for this repulsive idea of subjectivity in which we allow our sight to tell us what we can see, our ears to determine what we might hear, our minds to control the limits of our understanding and our hearts to lead us headlong into whatever self-righteous disaster we’ve yet to desire.

And all along the way all we find is ourselves failing to find anything that anyone could even theoretically consider a life lived, let alone a life lived well enough to have any semblance of meaning or purpose.

But I guess that since those things do seem almost entirely subjective from this world’s point of view, the same perspective in which we’ve grown up and lost our own minds, perhaps life is best lived relying upon our sight, our hearing, our understanding. Even if all the above have the sort of undeniable limitations that define the kind of inability to be anything more than what we’ve already been that eternally restricts us from ever knowing what it might be like to see, to hear, to believe, even to live.

Because when a life is lived lost within the inherent limitations of things such as our mortality, our comprehension, our vision, our vastly finite amount of time on this earth, the boundaries of time and space and experience upon this earth, all we can possibly be is what has already been. And if such is allowed to become our biggest aspiration, then to believe is something we can never do as it requires this sort of courageous willingness that refuses to even consider the acceptability of any limitation.

Our own most obviously.

Problem then is that we’ve not merely accepted our limitations, but we’ve gone so wrong as to seek, and alas apparently find, plenty of reasons and excuses and concessions which allow us to feel as though we’ve actually managed to accomplish the concept of a life well lived. Simply because we’ve decided to scrape by doing the little we can as best as we can, assuming that such mediocrity is somehow equivalent to notoriety.

And well, when things such as pride and vanity are so widespread and welcomed as they are in this world these days, as always, the idea of that least resistant path as the one wrapped within the warmth of our welcoming our limitations to define us while offering us the selfish ability to pat ourselves on the back for doing well the little we can do, we’ll boast in those crowns of cardboard as if they truly shine with all the glimmer and glory of gold.

Because if it looks good enough, sounds right enough, feels alright enough, then who cares what’s beneath the surface or beyond the boundaries? No, a life lost in love with superficiality is content with the content of misconception, misunderstanding, missed opportunity and all other similar mundanity as they all feel fine enough to allow for the assumption that we’re doing fine.

But what if we ain’t?

And yes, it is a word, and yes I love it, one of my favorites in fact. I’ve a whole list of things this world says aren’t words as they don’t see the simplicity they offer outside the technicalities of modern linguistic understandings.

Anyway. Back to our chosen blindness.

We spoke yesterday about the path which Christ has paved and our chosen struggle to see it. His way has been clear from the time He tore that veil and allowed blind eyes to see beyond themselves for the first time in their lifetime. That’s why He came and walked among us, spoke to us, taught all of us. It was to simplify, to clarify, to magnify the magnificent majesty of the simplicity of His path. He came to show us what our reliance upon sight needed to see for us to be what He calls us to be.

But still we miss it. Wildly! But how is that possible? How can we take something so elementary, so obvious, so clarified and manage to make it still so muddy, murky, misunderstood? Is it not only possible to miss His message simply because our ears don’t want to hear what He has to say? Do we not stray so violently from His straight and narrow for the sake of our crooked hearts? Do not our warped minds merely want all the ways in which to remain at ease inside lives lived wrongly without the gravity of knowing we’re doing wrong, or rather having to admit we’re doing wrong?

Is such not the entire basis of all dishonesty? Is it not merely an avoidance of truth, of reality, of responsibility? Do we not lie to one another, to ourselves mostly, simply because were we to speak the truth, well then we’d have to accept the truth in other areas of our lives? And does not a little truth spoil the whole batch?

See, that’s the danger of the truth isn’t it? It’s another leavening agent that works its way throughout whatever, whomever it enters, only it’s one that levels our arrogance once inside. That’s why we avoid it. It’s a consuming fire! It wreaks utter havoc upon every lie, every deception, every desire. It entirely burns to ash our arrogant assumptions of this life we’ve so long insisted we saw all these reasons to keep living the way we so loved to live it.

Yes, the truth obliterates our obliviousness to His ordination of how life is to be lived.

That’s why we claim we can’t see it. It’s why we do our best to always ensure the safeguard of selective hearing remains in place, guarding us from accidentally hearing anything that might spark this tender we’ve become in these lives lived building castles in the sand. Indeed, we are very much a people still working away on these idealistic lives, living as if we can see clearly every reason to keep assuming ourselves sufficient, superior, successful, satisfied, socially acceptable.

And all this lunacy we’re building has always been as foolish as it is today. But the definition of our deserving what we did see and do know about Christ’s path is that we still seek ways in which to deny we do know. No, instead of such honesty, we honestly live as if, should the off chance occur and we do slam face-to-face into this God we’ve long saw plenty of reason to ignore and deny, hopefully He will buy that we just didn’t know any better.

But how can that asinine assumption of His agreeing to our living in utter denial if not contempt of His existence accomplish anything for us? What do we gain by having to live a life always seeking lies for their comfort as opposed to the blatant affront of the truth that is simply there to help us live according to what we cannot deny we’ve always known?

See, the problem is that Adam and Eve really did us dirty. They plucked that fruit that they weren’t supposed to eat, and in doing so, they consumed the knowledge of the vast difference between good and evil. And though you and I don’t know what that fruit looked like, what tree it came from, where the Garden is in which that tree grew, the fact is it that it doesn’t matter. What matters is that as their offspring, that knowledge has been passed down to us.

God made sure of it.

And because we all know the difference between right and wrong, dark and light, good and evil, we simply cannot ever claim that didn’t know better. Never! And yet we live nearly the entirety of lives as if we can. As if He will agree. As if we’re not fooling ourselves by thinking that we can fool God. And that’s just a game so dangerous, so arrogant, so blasphemous that honestly, hell is better than we deserve for all these years spent seeing clearly what we still live without living like we can see.

Because at this point it’s not even denial, it’s straight up debasement. It’s an utter disregard for everything in life, of life, that we could do or be or have been in life. Our living as if we can’t see what we don’t want to see only accomplishes a laziness that affords us the laxity that provides the levity and latitude to keep doing only what we want without ever shouldering those crosses we know He called us to carry.

And that’s where all this gets scary.

Because so long as our crosses remain on the ground, the One who died our death is denied what He deserves. Our refusal to take up our crosses and slay our selfishness upon them is equivalent to saying that maybe it’s not worth it. Maybe we don’t need to do it. Maybe the selfishness we so adore isn’t all that problematic. Maybe sin isn’t quite so bad. Maybe a little depravity is good for the heart. Maybe a few years focused on having fun and living like a fool is truly harmless. Maybe hell doesn’t exist. Maybe Heaven doesn’t either. Maybe it’s all just a story. Maybe it’s make believe. Maybe we don’t need to believe.

No, maybe we can instead remain insistent that seeing is believing, and since we can’t see responsibility, since we can’t see reason, since we can’t see reality or reverence or repentance, well, then maybe none of them matter.

But the question is just how long can we go on living like nothing matters? How much more time, how many more days do we want to wager on our being right when we know the many times we’ve already been proven wrong? Is our eternal peace not worth the price we’re asked to pay? And what are we asked to pay?

To see.

To listen. To try. To surrender to the acceptance of truth and the fact that we’ve lived so many lies that left us not unable but merely unwilling to see it. And while that is as utterly humiliating and damaging to our pride as anything we can imagine, is it truly equal to death as we’ve long assumed? Is laying down our pride and taking up our crosses, and finding therein eternal life, really all that miserable? Can we truly not see, not find, not feel any reason at all to embrace humility if such accomplishes for us the ability to shed the crushing weight of dishonesty?

Because honestly, I can’t think of a harder life than one lived always needing to think of a lie to guard a lie that covers that lie that says we didn’t mess up , that we’ve not done wrong, that we didn’t know at the time. Because we did! And the simple reality of our mortality and eternity’s inevitability is that we’ll eventually run out of rugs to sweep the truth under. And when we do, those rugs will be yanked from under us and we’ll have no excuse remaining as to why we didn’t simply accept the truth and live our lives like we should have.

Friends, there’s a certain insanity inside each of us. It’s the result of having lost so much of our minds and morality that we’ve honestly little left of anything in which to trust. Of ourselves. But that’s the beauty of the Gospel. It’s that we don’t need to trust in ourselves anymore, that we never should have to begin with. It’s that we can now surrender our every mistake, our every excuse, our every self-chosen confusion and exchange them for the simplicity of humility that allows us to finally see fully the path laid out clearly before us.

That is why Christ came and why He calls us to stop living like idiots who claim they can’t see but yet see every reason to live like idiots. We’re playing a game we cannot win. And that is precisely why we need to stop while we’re behind and allow Him to remove all the stupidity we’ve managed to amass so that we can shed the insanity that has come to define us.

Because whether we agree to see it or not, this path ends in one place. And when we get there, as all of us will, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess and every soul will receive the judgement they’ve earned. Please do not live your life in such a way that leaves you looking for a way to escape that outcome or having to find a reason that atones for your life of irrationality. Let us instead live with eyes wide open to the truth and hearts that demand nothing less than His leading.

For He will not buy our excuse of blindness. Not when faith has always been a matter of believing rather than seeing.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold