Day 3442 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Corinthians 15:33 NIV

For perhaps the pit of which we’re warned by Christ in Matthew 15 as found by those blind led by the blind is this disbelief that’s so widely believed amongst those so vastly assumptive of a best life being one lived without Christ.

Indeed, it seems that this sullen society as swollen by selfish sin is such that assumes that a life can only ever be the sum of things assumed within these many eyes so blind that we believe in only what we see. In fact it’s such clichés that have come to corrupt this community into a culture of discontent descending upon such decisions as all this division and indifference in which we ourselves have become all but devoted to such disbelief and disarray.

All because that with which we are surrounded is that to which we’ll become accustomed.

Meaning then that those we discussed yesterday, those blinded into disbelief by the god of this age, they’ll come to insist we succumb to their invitations of this instigation of our investigation of our place to belong within this place that we are. This world looks for such openings as our fear of loneliness and solitude to instill this attitude that disallows us to devote ourselves to seeking and serving but a lone Lord and thus walking His narrow Way, all because we’ve come to believe that if we’re to be here then we may as well be here comfortably.

And what is more widely comforting than our sense of belonging as beheld behind those blind leading all without eyes to see or hearts to try into the choices they themselves have chosen which define the pit of a person’s preference for a pride’s partiality?

Indeed, we live as if this world, since having been around for longer than we’ve been upon it, perhaps has the ability to insist that we’re to learn life from the ways of the world which has been at this longer than we. Yes, this concession even extends unto culture in that the ways of man have been tinkered and tweaked into this pretense of progression that seems to prove that those around us are more apt to help us than any we can’t yet see. And it’s this very message that we learn of faith from those we look to who think it foolish.

The tragic fact is that such is but one lesson we’ve learned from those to whom we look for advice as to how to live a life. We’ve in fact learned a great many things about how life is lived here in this world in which nearly all assume themselves never leaving, never erring, never nearing the two combining into an outcome of righteous judgement as defined in and promised by the Word of God which was breathed out for our benefit.

What benefit?

Life and how to live it well.

But you see, we’ve fallen in concert with a culture content to contend for a life best lived as opposed to a well-lived life. And while the two may seem upon the surface to be separated by a mere matter of semantic, the truth is that a best life as defined by what people think best is quite opposed to the position of a life well lived according to what God says is right. Indeed, man’s best doesn’t really have to agree to God’s design as we’ve long felt both this need to do only what we want to do and too the ability to see it through.

And our incessant seeing to doing only what we want to has left us blind to anything else, especially the truth we didn’t have our hand in writing.

Oddly enough, and rather ironic to be sure, it’s now that very truth as written in God’s Word for our benefit of a life well lived according to God’s definitions of right and wrong as defined by His designed division between dark and light, it’s that truth which stands as public enemy number one amongst this public in enmity against the only One in which hope exists. But still we try to prove that we know a better version, a closer source, a far less limited outlook than that looking outside oneself for all that a self can simply never be.

Forget all that humiliating humility though as it has so clearly been left no place amongst this humanity who live as if vanity is the only prosperity able to afford this sense of self-assurance in which we rely upon our own abilities, understandings and assumptions assuming that we know enough of what we’re doing that we can do it well without ever needing any help that we neither asked for nor insisted to come help us anyway.

That is a rather elementary paraphrase of the Gospel’s entirety as it were. It’s that we blinded by sin needed help as we thus couldn’t see anything beyond the sins we’d so grown to assume as life itself that we assimilated ourselves into the sinful ways of life as lived within a world fallen into what is still seemingly a sort of disrepair that inspires only despair that defines the utter indifference still shown unto He who knew we needed such help but too held such a prideful opinion of ourselves that we could neither ask for it nor agree to it.

Indeed, He knew well that we’d all fall away, even those who knew Him best having walked alongside Him seeing all He did and hearing first-hand all He said.

And yet He came and did what He knew we needed Him to do so that through that tomb some of us might die to how we’ve lived so lost in a world running so fast from Him that we’ve all been swept up into the undertow of this world going under until they’re finally under His feet.

The problem is that the world is indeed running so very fast from God and all things good, and we’re so used to trying to feel as if we’ve a place among this people, that we’re left losing life by trying to live it in accord with the ways in which this world works and wants and wishes and warns any and all who want to belong that they’re to do the same if they’re to win their own welcome amongst this world. Yes, we have to do as the world does if we’re to feel welcome here.

And the condemnation is defined in that we’ve done just that. In every way possible.

We have become little minions of this mankind so mangled by the blindness of disbelief that we ourselves have no idea as to what belief even is let alone how to find it, do it, understand it. We got nothing in that regard, all because all belief as taught us by this world is based upon what we see, and thus what we see is what we believe we are supposed to be, to do, to say, to assume. And when we allow ourselves to be blinded into disbelief beyond the wicked ways of this world, then too we will believe only to be of the wicked ways of this world.

In every way possible.

And having become replicas of this world bent upon rebellion, such now defines our struggle in terms of such things as faith, humility, temperance, patience, surrender, suffering, mortality, morality, common decency. Indeed, we are bound, as products of a lost world, to struggle mightily with anything that is otherworldly. And this poses a problem of eternal proportions because everything asked of us and promised to us within God’s Word breathed for us is the entire antithesis of all that this world has come to assume and thus insist of us if we’re to feel at home here.

Indeed, our struggle to accept the brutal honesty of the Gospel of God’s great mercy is that we’ve sadly grown up in a culture of condemnation. Our struggle to understand the truth of God’s commands is a condition of our having lived to accomplish the satisfaction of those demands placed upon us by a world built to run on deception. Our struggle to wrap our minds around things like kindness and compassion as proven in Christ Jesus is a reflection of this world of competition and exclusion making it seem that we’re to fight and argue and remain at all times, for absolutely any reason whatsoever, so entirely divided and divisive that we’re well within our rights to hate one another.

Yes, we have come to hate any and all who are in any way any different than we’ve become as replicas of a world pretending this pride that insists all others cower before us before we’ll welcome them into our open arms concealing closed-off hearts that want everyone else only to affirm our misunderstandings so that we’ll never feel any need to address them.

And this is why bad company corrupts good character. It’s because that with which we’re surrounded is the same as that to which we’ll eventually become likely to become when our ability to refrain from fellowship invites our surroundings to inspire us, incite us to begin doing or saying or thinking or believing whatever those around us have settled for so that we can feel as if we finally belong. And as this world is one in which belief in God is considered foolish, well then that’s become all we know too, for it’s all we know for that’s all we’ve known.

Now granted, there are here, at times, whisperings of such things as grace and forgiveness, but for the most part we witness only hatred and division based upon dismissal due to disappointment and indifference. There are contemplations of such things as peace and compassion, but alas, due to prideful differences of vain opinions, we see mostly instead only contention and selfishness. We might witness some acts of unbridled love as shown in someone putting another before themselves, but such acts are of such rarity that it makes them hard to believe in. Because again, seeing is believing.

And since most of what we see within this world is the darkness and hatefulness and cowardice and noncompliance inspired by a gross negligence toward life itself which is possible only due to a worldwide denial of God’s existence, well then such are exactly what we’re all well at risk of learning and thus becoming ourselves.

Indeed, we’ve grown so indifferent in regard to things like mercy and grace and kindness and truth that we simply don’t know what to do with them, don’t know how to respond to them. They don’t make any sense in our minds so confused by all the condemnation and competition and society’s contentment within them. We know only to see and assume the worst as that’s exactly what the world has taught us to do so as to always prove ourselves better than someone else.

And the challenge now presented by faith is that we know the truth of creation as God wrote such a reality upon our hearts. And thus we know deep down that we are indeed sinners as defined in Scripture. We know well both the severity of our flaws and too the quantity of our failures. We know we don’t deserve this unbridled kindness poured out for us in Christ Jesus. We don’t deserve to have someone forgive us as we’ve done things we know to be entirely unforgivable.

Much less do we deserve then that an innocent Man would literally lay down His life to save we who’ve been His mortal enemies.

For that is in fact what we’ve undeniably become as those who’ve sadly become like those amongst whom we walk who live as if Christ isn’t real, as if God isn’t there, as if truth is theirs to define as they see fit, as if life is party meant to seek only selfish pleasure even at the expense of another.

Indeed, we have become every bit worldly in every way possible so that we could feel as if we fit amongst this bad company we’ve been surrounded by all this time. And thus we seem to misunderstand the gravity of mortality and that thus we owe a death and that, as the sinners we know but still deny ourselves to be, we know that death should hold no hope. And so again, we just don’t know what to do with the hope of Heaven nor the glory of the Gospel of the grace of God which opens that door we know we nailed shut years ago in order to feel the door to this world’s welcome swing wide open.

And the difficulty in our now feebly trying to wrap our minds around the idea of a love that truly forgives those who so truly don’t deserve it is that we can’t see ourselves as Jesus does as, again, all we know is this culture of condemnation that we’ve grown within only to become just like. And so our every attempt to decipher the cypher that is salvation simply falls flat when we realize that it only works when we’re kindly given what we simply don’t deserve.

And we have no idea how that can work as within this world you have to work to earn whatever you want as given by those who withhold all they can so as to retain their sense of selfish power over others.

Thus we have to now do everything entirely differently than how this world has taught us to try. Rather than leaning upon ourselves, now we have to trust, to believe, to lean into faith knowing that the only way any of this is real or even feasible is if God is truly so much better than us that Jesus would literally choose to die for us while we were His enemies. And to a people who’ve, again the world, become unable to consider such things as kindness and mercy as we live, like they, always putting ourselves first and thus leaning almost exclusively upon our own understanding, this faith does indeed seem foolish.

Because we can’t figure it out. We can’t understand it from here inside these many misunderstandings that the here has inspired us to hold. And while the vanity needed within this culture of competitive condemnation can’t understand that sort of humility needed to see beyond oneself toward the help that a self can’t give itself, can’t agree to that sort of inability, in the end we have no other choice. Because it’s just not about us leaning still upon this worldly arrogance that has us so used to thinking we can figure everything out so as to ensure we measure up to whatever expectation the world around us has placed upon us.

Faith isn’t about our figuring out how it works nor how to now measure up to what we know we can’t repay. It’s simply about accepting the alien realization that He doesn’t ask that we do, but just that we believe.

And simply put, that is in no way anything we’ve ever learned or even heard of within this world in which we’ve walked to win their welcome.

Which is exactly why God in Christ has now called us to come apart from the world as we turn onto a path called repentance in which we’re led by the Spirit back to the Son who is the very image of God. It’s because we will never find Him nor be found in Him so long as we remain in and of this world in which He’s as unwelcome as He’s always been. Because we cannot learn the truth that came to set us free unless and until we’re no longer afraid to be different from the world we’re in.

Because bad company will continue to obliterate good character. An immoral world cannot instill in us the morality needed to honor the God they pretend doesn’t exist. A deceptive world cannot teach us a reverence of honesty or humility as they lean upon dishonesty and arrogance. A wicked world cannot lead us to a home of righteousness as righteousness and wickedness simply have no agreement.

And thus nor can we anymore agree to remain of this world, because so long as we do, we only leave ourselves open to every wrong suggestion. And considering the overall trajectory of this world, I think it’s beyond safe to assume that the things they’ll ask us to do, think, say, believe will only become more and more depraved. And we just can’t afford to risk any more than we already have.

Not with the hope of Heaven on the line.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold