Day 3906 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 26:4-5 NIV

Hidebound

Perhaps it’s something that simply comes about with age. Maybe it’s an outlook that we stumble upon in what’s become a world which jades. It could be a mere reactionary reaction unto the fractures and factions which all but daily spring up all around us. Whatever the case may be the fact seems to remain that I have found myself suddenly quite content as to the joy I feel in my living a life that is being lived in what is likely quite easily perceived as a remarkably narrow-minded perspective that’s growing only in its apparent unwillingness to move or be moved.

Simply because I think that’s kind of the point.

You see, this world has managed to convince us to live as these all but rudderless ships that exist to simply blow about and fall apart in their endless searching for the treasure of worldly pleasure and social adoration. We’ve all become vastly infatuated with this boundless ability to seek the applause and approval of our many communities via such mediums as social media and other mainstream monotonies. In fact, it could be, and perhaps will be one day argued that each of us have given our lives unto seeking a monopoly upon cultural acclaim.

In short, we all want to be famous, to go viral, to be well-known by as many as we might not know ourselves because, well, that’s what here both sells and thus pays the bills. And we love this idea of the world hanging on our every word and following our every way. Why? Because as ships without rudders that are also taking on water, we kind of think that wherever we already are is where we’re supposed to be. For the sinking we can’t manage to escape feeling has left us thinking that it’s just best to make the most out of whatever we’ve always been.

But then something amazing happens, at least unto those few who’ve the audacity to behold the necessity of potentially doing something new. And that gift is that they’re changed. Maybe in night, perhaps over the course of a few days, maybe over the expanse of a couple of decades. But the fact remains that this life we’re living is in fact a living thing. And as a living experience, life itself is always moving, always changing, always growing. There’s always something that we can know or see or be.

And indeed, these days we’re invited to try on basically whatever identity we may feel we need to in our search for the perceived treasure that apparently pleasure and applause are so able to provide.

And indeed, there are a great and growing majority here who are doing everything short of killing themselves seeking for their share of some new high as held so lofty by those who’ve themselves quite similar opinions of themselves.

Yes, this world is packed to the frills with folks who think so highly of themselves that they’ve arrived upon their share of this shared assumption that all life here can ever hope to amount to is nothing but their enjoyment of basically anything that they may in any way see or assume might be worth at least trying just once. Indeed, we’ve been taught to lead this lost way of life spent thinking we’ve found the very meaning of it hidden within always the experiencing of something more.

We are a people of evermore, always so filled with such fun and decadence that we cannot seem to notice just how empty we really are at what is the daily end of one more day being spent looking to a dying world to tell us how to live.

And what’s more is that we like it like this.

Why? Well, if we were to be honest we probably couldn’t come anywhere close to anything even remotely resembling a logical reason nor even a tangible guess. Why? Because we’ve lived so long at the behest and suggest of a world inviting us always to be their guest at some banquet fit for kings who think not themselves fools that we too just know to wake up every morning, dust off our suits, polish up our crowns and head on into town wherein we always readily expect to be cheered as we enter the presence of those peasants that we oddly enough still live to please.

Indeed, though our pride and ego will almost certainly always deny it, the fact is that so much of what we say and do and even think is all the direct result of the influence of those for whom we live to perform. Again, you won’t ever catch us admitting that. No. But underneath all the lies and lights the fact remains that the life we know is that lived to please people we both probably don’t know and who obviously don’t know us.

You know, considering all the makeup, the costumes, the rehearsed lines, the hashtags and all other fakery.

But still, we’re all seemingly so content with it being this way that we watch every single day as that way of life only continues onward in what’s basically an unstoppable march toward the very same nothing that we’ve all already found (which explains why we keep looking for more stuff to find or feel) and thus the same nothing that we’ve all always been (simply because our very existence is so reliant upon praise from the public that we know only to do what they do, say what they say, crave what they crave and whatever other similar steadying of the boat we might grow in a willingness to agree with and thus adhere to).

Yes, we love to cause no trouble, sound no alarms, ask no questions and thus answer in only lies.

Why?

Because that’s what’s expect of us. For we are most certainly well within those times described in Scripture in which most have absolutely no endurance for sound teaching having gathered about themselves so many ear-scratchers that it’s no head-scratcher as to why those following anything even plausibly resembling a straight line will be found as being what is now one of my all-time favorite words:

Hidebound.

As mentioned in yesterday’s attempt to help make all this make sense, hidebound is a fairly derogatory term used to most likely try and belittle those who are seen as being inflexible, intolerant, narrow-minded, small-thinking, unthinking, unreceptive, unimpressive, unreconstructed and thus blinder-wearing buffoons who live a life in which they have only “fixed opinions and ways of doing things” and are thus “not willing to change or be influenced, especially by new or modern ideas.”

Indeed, those who determine to live life disciplined within a discipleship under the tutelage or patronage of anything or anyone other than society and its chosen “norms” are to be considered inflexible and narrow-minded. Why? Because we just refuse to think in the ways in which this world all but demands that all of us agree with so as to avoid the collective coming upon the realization that what we’re doing down here both matters far more than we’ve ever considered and thus, in light of that, we’re in far more trouble than we’ve ever imagined.

Yes, this world no longer asks for our acceptance and applause but they simply demand it so as to feel always this endless comfort as is found in all manner of such approval and affirmation. Not because anyone here is so endlessly certain that what they’re doing is right but simply because everyone here is anymore so caustically adverse to change that there’s now simply no other way.

This world lives as if everything that anyone wants to do is right for them to do. Indeed, be it pretending you’re the opposite gender of that which you were so monstrously “assigned at birth” or even going so far as to literally spend time debating as to when it’s okay to kill babies as determined somehow the humane thing to do, the blatant reality is that there is now no limit as to what all we can be or readily become convinced is pretty much standard operating procedure.

But friends, there is nothing that this world is doing that should in any way be so standard as so much of it has sadly become anyway.

I mean we literally celebrate sin in our streets and are always the very first to pick up stones and notice those specks in the eyes of those around us. We are in every way a people fallen so far short of the glory of God that we’ve all come together and apparently decided that we should just stop living as if He’s even there at all.

Yeah, we live in a world that utterly rejects the very possibility that there could be a God who’s watching everything we do and hears every word we say. Why? Again, it’s not because we all think that everything we’re doing and saying is right. No, it’s simply because we know the casualty deserved in our having so clearly arrived in a way life derived from both desire and denial and thus understand the causality of our choices and how they may have always held more potential for cost and consequence than we ever dared to consider.

But we’ve lived for so long thinking that change is so bad that we’re literally watching a world grind itself to dust here in between the Rock and this hard place which is this way of life that finds us each living as a head case.

Which then ironically means that we’re all hidebound in one way or another.

It just so happens that a few of us are so staunch in our search for something better that we eventually find ourselves having arrived upon this resolve in our beliefs that we never again agree to entertain our plausible involvement in the world’s continued fealty unto being influenced by “new and modern ideas.”

Indeed, I’ve personally seen more than enough of all these “new and modern ideas” that are being shoved down our throats to know that there’s likely not much good ever coming from our being so open to such worldly influence.

In fact, I’m growing to absolutely detest that word!

Why?

Because to be influenced is something of an agreement to surrender the potential for our words, thoughts and actions to be effected by another who is then given “the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something”. For to influence is defined as “having the power or capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible ways”. It’s “the act or power of producing an effect without apparent exertion of force or direct exercise of command.” In other words, it’s a form of manipulation so minute and thus unnoticed that it acts as the water that slowly soaks into the wood of a boat.

It’s so unrealizable that we pay it no mind, we mind it not at all.

Indeed, we are anymore so unbothered by influence that there are a great and growing many who have opted for that to be their entire career if not to sum up the baser majority of their very existence!

Yes, we love to be influenced!

Why?

Because it lets us off the hook in regard to such things as thinking our own thoughts, forming our own opinions, making our own choices and finding the courage to take our own stances. No, we can just share whatever someone else is doing. We can repeat whatever they’re saying. We can buy all the same clothes, put on all the same makeup, go to all the same places and thus live as basically the very same people. And then we’ll be rich and famous just like they are!

Yay!

Because then our lives will mean something. Because then we can influence people too. Then folks will notice us. Then we’ll feel like we matter. Yes, just do as everyone else does and think in only the thoughts that they choose to think and you’ll be so loved and welcome here that you’ll never have to fear having to leave it all behind.

Doesn’t mean you won’t as all of us will. But hey, at least you’ll go out on top of a ship that’s long rested upon the cold hard reality of a life lived at the darkened rock bottom of what’s such a sinful and depraved society that again we’re out here just killing those who disagree with us.

And mocking or belittling those who “have fixed opinions and ways of doing things” and are thus “not willing to change or be influenced, especially by new or modern ideas.”

Friends, just because something is now done with some form of newfound technology or modern pageantry involved doesn’t mean it’s actually new. In fact, as part of my hidebound perspective, I personally hold to the Scripture which points out that there is nothing new under the sun. And, alongside that one, I also hold to the truth that says that the Son came to make all things new in His doing of a new thing that was so new that it began with death and resulted in everlasting life.

Yes, I believe in eternal life as a promise given unto those who, in Christ, come to live a way of life in which they refuse to be influenced by all of this socially-perceived modernity because they see if for the mundanity that it so clearly remains.

For there is nothing new about a world that denies God, and thus which does nothing new but live in such depths of sin in their shared belief that He’s not there and they’ll thus never need answer for anything they do.

And again, it’s easy to see why that idea has such an appeal. For it does indeed bring with it a sense of freedom and liberality that allows us to enjoy the many fruits growing in this place as liberally as our gluttony may so grow to desire.

But friends the fact is that freedom to do something does not guarantee the freedom from the consequences of having so done.

No, still every knee will bow and that followed by what will prove a tongue confessing words that their soul had never once known: That Christ is King and they thus are not. Both done unto the glory of God, and thus not unto our own. Thus finding us quite remarkably humbled at what will prove the end of life for all of us, but only the beginning of such for a few.

And those few are those who refuse to do what this world demands we do. They’re those who decline every invite to partake of the sinful ways of deception and mockery made mainstream by this vastly fallen and failing society. They’re those who “do not sit with the deceitful” nor “associate with hypocrites.” Who “abhor the assembly of evildoers and refuse to sit with the wicked.”

Those who understand that “wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God.” And who thus comprehend that “neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

Because they also humbly confess that that is what some of us were before we were washed, sanctified, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Indeed, those few who leave this life to find the better life are those who dare to take God up on His promise that “blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.”

And too that “cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the LORD.”

Do you see the problem now with allowing such worldly influence as we’ve become so delighted to welcome?

It’s that doing such has opened us unto allowing in anything and everything this world desires for us to share in or agree with. And no, it shouldn’t be such a crime to embrace the company of those who are too made in the image of God. But the issue is that the vast majority here hold now to no appreciation that God is there. Most here live as if He’s just some figment in the imagination of a few lifeless losers who live their lives not enjoying all of the enjoyments that most here find and feel within a life lived in sin.

And that is why Scripture tells us that bad company corrupts good character. It’s because the company we keep is the same as those who are allowed the most influence. And sadly, in this world, in this day, in the shape it’s in and in light of the things being done, I just personally don’t see how we can afford to allow in anything that may in any way cause us to take part in what are increasingly obvious fruits borne in darkness and thus to be reaped in the inescapable suffering of eternal damnation.

And I understand that such heavy wording will cause many to deem me unthinking and largely intolerant. And you know what, they’re absolutely right! Because I have no interest in tolerating what this world tolerates because we are not called to tolerate sin but rather to detest it. Nor then have I any willingness to even for a moment be found thinking about the things that most here seem to think about as I know that I am not called to live this life to sow unto the pleasure of the flesh but rather to seek the glory, honor and praise of our Heavenly Father.

No, I don’t want to understand what this world demands I agree with, and nor then do I expect them to understand the many ways in which I can’t. For I have lost my need to feel as if I belong here, as if I’m loved here.

I don’t want a world that loves sin and thus hates God to love me. Nor then do I want to feel as if I belong in a place that still refuses Christ a place in their considerations.

I want rather to be hated, misunderstood, rejected. Why? Because we can see what the world is willing to accept. And well, if the world’s still so clearly unwilling and disinterested in accepting my Savior, why then should I give any time to worrying about trying to make sure they accept me?

For my life is now hidden in Christ and I grow there deeper all the time, leaving then me to this world all but dead and this world all but dead to me.

But the best part is that it frees me from all worry as I live now hidebound to He who bore my sins and achieved my hope.

A hope this world neither can take nor seems even willing to know.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold