Day 3627 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ephesians 4:22 NIV

Whereby being then made new within what are the attitudes of our minds as measured within the holiness held therein or rather a lack thereof as demanded if we’re to put then on the new self made to again be like God in true righteousness and holiness as held for so long in such low regard that something so critical as a grave was made the way by which brand new might we thus become.

And so indeed, let us begin.

Alas, it seems that perhaps the beginning is to become the most begrudging, most belittling, most absolutely brutal movements of all thereafter. Because the beginning of this brand new of what is eternally better only begins at our end. And this is pretty much right where most find plenty enough reason to consider this faith something so violently ridiculous that they then find reason to find all of us who walk in accord with a way and will not our own to be the very pinnacles of foolishness and idiocy.

Simply because this world’s taught us to never venture to see anywhere beyond ourselves, no matter how parasitic our personal relationships with ourselves may have become.

And I say parasitic here because so much of our past choices and their corresponding actions or attitudes blossomed, or will soon, only into what are what’ll eventually be proven these little monsters of mistake and misunderstanding that have each left us standing where we are as who we are without any regard to anything anywhere within the way nor want of or for whatever might be so easily perceived as everything better. No, we are anymore so lukewarm in regard to life itself that we seem to see only reasons to be what we’ve already been.

Leaving then everything we could have become what becomes unto us nothing but a mere matter of denial as measured, one somehow in the vicinity of equivalency, somewhat worth less than what we know isn’t anywhere near our very best. Or pretty good. Or not too bad. Or good enough. Or quite okay. Or just fine. Or can’t complain. Or whatever other common cliché as counted worthy of such worthless gravity as all small-talk proves always to be as spoken in an effort to dilute the degree of depression, disappointment, guilt, shame, regret, embarrassment or whatever other close companions we’ve come to allow to so often remain.

Indeed, why do we continue to so allow such things? And perhaps even worse, and in truth maybe even perfectly problematic, is that we go then the extra mile within all our denial to even deny the feelings we’re feeling, because we know them to be only everything but anything freeing.

But might it then be at least somewhat safe to say that we’ve perhaps become so comfortably numb within what is a life so very corrupted as lived inside our every deceitful desire, all of which are still anymore considered so very delightful, that we daren't confess that we like it like this?

For why else would we remain so adverse to change? Why always revert back to the pasts already passed into what’s proven a pretty much perfect portrait of the inabilities and insufficiencies of such things as pride and opinion, preference and decision? Or do we still hold to this idea that all we do is to be deemed at least somewhat safe if not rather remarkably harmless simply due to the fact that it’s the same stuff that everyone else does? After all, while we could have and indeed have had quite the play within all our own problems and shortfalls, we’ve had more than a little help from those equally corrupted themselves.

Which is obviously something bound to come around when a life is lived in love with this lie of a life in which we live as if all we should love is only that which asks so little of us that we can literally never move, never change, never grow, never learn, never lose nor leave anything behind for what appears to be an entire lifetime. And I suppose that our having been so exposed to so very many doing this so very clearly, it seems to make sense that such company would indeed, at least eventually, come to corrupt as much of us as we might invite them to try.

Meaning then that this willful open-door policy that we live with in regard to every aspect of us and this life we live is what’s made us into who we’re afraid to not be anymore. But why? What’s so amazing about such things as the words we say being but a repetition of what someone else said in our presence, our thoughts being not much more than those others have thought before, our actions being what is undeniably a quite close mimicking of the mainstream and monotonous, and even our every belief becoming only those most widely agreed upon as being becoming of what this world’s become and refuses to betray?

Yes, there’s the word I’ve been looking for: Betrayal.

For make no mistake, such is what all change is, is it not? It’s a betrayal of the present, of the sufficient, of the arguably successful even. And indeed, this is in fact what we’ve come to seek for most in life, just some semblance of something fairly sufficient or relatively successful that we can easily enough continue to repeat, if not ad nauseam, for however long we might have left. Yeah, just find a habit, a rut, I mean routine, a pattern, a plan, a path and just set your sights upon nothing more than going through the motions that should, hopefully, keep all such things as motion and commotion and devotion at a distance.

But what distance? And, since we can’t anymore seem to see beyond ourselves and this rather elated stagnancy we’ve so selfishly settled for, what might be just a little further than that distance we’re otherwise quite unwilling to ever venture or risk? Yes, what might we have to betray in order to not be left living a life in which we lay awake at night barely treading water through what often feels an ocean of what ifs and could have beens?

Nah, maybe it is best to never find out what we could have been had we been a bit more willing to become something better.

And who says you can’t write sarcasm?

But seriously, in all honesty, what are we so afraid of in regard to everything better that we’ve become so willing and able to hate what’s required for us to find it, feel it, be it? How have we become so very corrupted in terms of our thoughts and attitudes that we awake every day only already willing to lose every single opportunity to learn something new, to do something different, to leave behind something that just ain’t working, to let go of a life that’s left us just barely living? And if you’re not yet to that point in regard to honesty, well, can’t you at least see within that hesitancy to be real with yourself what might be a problem that needs some attention?

See, that’s the thing about every single one of our problems, be them mistakes, misunderstandings, misinterpretations, the ongoing manhandling of everything we’re doing trying to make it all seem like we know what we’re doing despite all the mistakes we’re making and misunderstandings we’re finding and other such monsters we’ve come to consider best left in whatever closets we can find in our mind that aren’t already all but filled if not overflowing with every other excuse to never lose or leave behind what we can so clearly see isn’t anywhere near what even we thought to be what could be best for us:

They’re all so unable to change that they simply never will unless and until something quite drastic comes along and shoves us into that willingness to confess what a mess we’ve made of our life so far and too, having been the ones who made every single mistake, that we need a little help from someone that’s not us.

Like Jesus maybe.

Or rather, like Jesus only as He is the only One who gave His life in what was not only a sacrifice meant to help us see the cost of our corrupted way of life, but also an example, yes you read me right, an example of what we’re expected to share in should we want from Him any portion or percentage of the promise and purpose for which He chose to willingly endure such inconceivable misery.

Why did He do it? I mean, He’s God, right? He could have surely come up with an easier way, a more comfortable way, a far more relaxing and peaceful and simple way to atone for our mistakes. I mean, shoot, He could have just forgiven them without all the blood and suffering. So why didn’t He? We would have. We still try to in fact. Indeed, we do this very thing each and every time we try to hide something or deny something or pretend that something we’ve done, been, become isn’t really all that bad.

Surely we don’t actually deserve to face what He felt in our place. Right?

A few foul words aren’t that bad, are they? The grocery store wasn’t going to miss that candy bar that somehow made it into our pocket, would they? I mean, come on, our getting hammered on a Friday night or hitting the club and looking to hookup a one-night kind of romance, it doesn’t really hurt anybody. Does it? Looking lustfully as images flashing on a computer screen or heading downtown and slinking into the strip-joint to see the real thing, it’s normal man. Isn’t it?

Indeed, seems that such things have become normal. And because of their apparently agreed upon normality, we’ve all become quite desensitized to it. Like taking the Lord’s in vain, it’s something done in almost every movie and TV show and hit pop song anymore. Or gluttony, that’s a good one. It’s nothing for us to belly up to a buffet and treat our bodies like an experiment to see just how much all you can eat really might mean. Or vanity, pretty easy one too as we live within a world in which all we seem to live through are cell phones that come with photography filters that make us look prettier to the people we’re trying to please.

Fame, yeah, another big one as it’s the focus of almost everyone in some way. Granted, we call it followers and we do or say whatever we need in order to get them feeding and fiending if not all but almost fainting for our feeds of scenes showing a perfect life that we know isn’t possible without the filters and hashtags making it seem so. No, we don’t see any problem with any of this, and friends, that’s the problem! We’ve become so very worldly that we don’t see any difference anymore.

We don’t know where we end and this wicked world begins. Life is just a blurred belief so betrayed that we’ve literally come to hate the idea of change.

How could that be? How could we possibly look at a verse like this, one speaking to the violent shedding of what is a life lived sinning so much that we don’t see a problem in it anymore, and see something of a question? How could we doubt as to the necessity of this opportunity? Did we get nothing out of Calvary? Maybe, as some even said then, if He truly was the Son of Heaven then He’d have surely saved Himself. Again, we would have.

Because, again, we don’t see any problems so dangerous in our lives, in our choices, in our minds that make those choices that become our lives, we don’t see any danger in anything anymore. It’s all just normal. It’s harmless. It’s just the way it is. How many times have we either heard that or fallen back upon it ourselves? It’s just the way it is. Nothing I can do about it. No way that I can change it. It’s just the way it’s always been and so it’s the way it will probably always be.

Yes, everything will always only be whatever it already is unless and until something drastic is done.

Kind of like God coming to earth in Christ and giving His life for no other reason than to help us see that our sins are earning our deaths and that thus we have to change if we’re to find anything other than misery and suffering when this life is over. Because one day it will be. And if we find that day, or rather when that day finds us, if we’re still the same as we’ve always been, then all we’ll be is sinners enslaved to sin left to pay the debt of every wage that every sin has always lived to win.

But friends, that’s why He did what He did the way He did it. Sure, He could have come up with something else, but what else would have made such a lasting mark that it still inspires such things as repentance even these couple thousand later? He could have just forgiven us, given up on us, let us off easy, slap on the wrist and a somewhat disappointed wink and nod like we’ve offered ourselves all these years. Yeah, He could have done it the way we think it should have been without any pain, any suffering, any sacrifice.

How could that have ever moved anyone to change?

No, that is the point of His suffering. It’s to help us see that we need not only some change, not only a few things reconsidered, not merely a habit here or there corrected. No, we’re in fact so very corrupted that even our minds think only of ways in which to do as we please without agreeing to anything in the way of cost or consequence. But again, friends, that’s the problem! Because like it or not, consequences do exist. And while that cross contends that He came to cover ours for us, that doesn’t give us an easy way out.

For there’s still only one Way out, and as that Way said himself, “whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

And what makes it so hard in regard to making this kind of change is that we live in a world so vastly lost that the majority of folks live as if they don’t care to be worthy of what He did. No, we’re surrounded by this mindset that considers it better to remain unchanged than to embrace the shame shown on the cross that proves the cost of every single consequence to every single choice that we’ve ever made in consideration of only what was common, what was comfortable, what was convenient.

The nails that held Him to that cross were made of how vastly we’ve succeeded in making sin seem normal!

And if we can’t find in that every reason to make every change that we’ve already always known we needed to make, I don’t know what to say. Maybe there is nothing to say. Because if the chance to leave behind everything that we know was nowhere near anything good, if that opportunity doesn’t inspire us, I don’t imagine that anything ever will. Because no, He didn’t have to do it, let alone the way He did. Didn’t have to die for me as I know I’ve given Him absolutely no reason to ever imagine it might be worth it.

But He did because He knows it is. Because He knows there’s a freedom found beyond merely doing whatever we want and living thereafter as if it was the right thing to do just because we wanted it to be. No, there’s more to this life than that because there’s just got to be more to life to see than what we’ve already shown. But challenge is that it’s found only in the betrayal of who we’ve become and our every corrupted thought that tells us that it’s okay to stay. Because it isn’t. There is nothing okay about staying dead in sin.

Not when there’s a brand new life meant to be lived forever, and that in peace no less, waiting for all of us in Him who did what He didn’t have to so as to try and inspire us to do what we’ve always known we needed to but sadly never wanted to.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold