Day 3907 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Proverbs 8:13 NIV

Narrow-minded

Such is the widely held opinion of all who walk according to basically any measure of any faith placed in anything. And that’s because to adhere to any basic set of principles or morals or even personally conceived standards is to welcome into one’s mind the narrowing down of things, thoughts and theories that are elsewise vastly accepted within the world around us. And that’s because the world around us has, for the most part, adopted this general approach to life in which width is what matters most as such is what offers a person the best ability and greatest opportunity to taste, touch, see and say as much of what this world has to offer as one might feel they’re so free to so plausibly enjoy.

And indeed, how can any of us know for certain that which is good from that which is not unless and until we experience it all for ourselves?

Well, I’ll tell you how.

We can trust. We can humble ourselves. We can embrace the baser fact that there exists both good and evil within this world and, in light of that simple fact alone, acknowledge the danger posed in our perhaps doing things that some may call good only to again find out just how wrong both they and we turned out to be when once again the world is proven to have no foggy idea as to what they’re doing. That is most definitely an outcome that all of us have most defiantly come upon already in life for all of us have said, done, thought or bought things, ideas, ideals, idols that ended up being nothing of what we initially thought them to be.

And so we all know the guilt and regret that come from such moments in which we cower before the suggestions of anything and anyone who may not be worth the trust we’re always so sheepishly willing to just give away for free.

Not because we even think that doing so is that wonderful of an idea, considering all the times we’ve been burned before, but simply because we’ve all become quite receptive unto the world’s suggestions as such are always made in what are ways that seem to say that we can stay both here and largely comfortable so long as we mostly bend under the yoke of those many living as if all faith is a joke and have themselves thus no self-control nor then a willingness to embrace even the lesser reasonability of such things as even mere personal responsibility.

Indeed, this world is to the point in which many all but mock at such ideas. Responsibility? Self-control? Modesty? Morality? Truth which comes in a manner of objectivity as opposed to the rampant subjectivity to which we’ve opted to subject everything in our continued objection to just about everything that we can in any way just so happen to even perhaps find offensive?

No, this world has no such inclination as to the insinuation that we would be better off to slow our roll, get a grip, calm down and spend some time combing through the choices we’ve made which have amounted to the lives we live and see if there is anything in them that is either leading us in anything of an even potentially detrimental direction or causing even the slightest degree of danger or despair to have even the slimmest of opportunity to in any way possibly upend anything from happiness to holiness.

In fact, this world lives as if holiness is a fairy tale thus not worth believing and thus that any who do believe it are themselves fools that are just unwilling to experience the happiness that is anymore only found in such things as personal pleasure and public praise.

That’s all that seems to matter anymore.

People just want to feel good and look good as the both seem to pretty much check off every box that most believe we need to achieve in order to have accomplished the very epitome of a life’s entire potential. Yes, just do whatever makes you happy, whatever makes you feel good, whatever the world will readily agree is good. That’s anymore the very key to an apparently successful and meaningful and purpose-filled life.

Doesn’t seem to matter that it obviously never manages to work out quite that way, you know, considering how stinking unhappy everyone always is and the vast and still growing amount of such things as hatred and degeneracy and general depravity being seen and shown basically everywhere all the time.

No, that’s all fine! Nothing at all to worry about. Those minor drawbacks are anymore considered nothing but the commonly expected growing pains that are to be met in all such efforts as any given unto our getting more of what we want and less of all we don’t. For after all, in order to taste and experience all there is within this world in our selfish search for what makes us feel and look the best, we’re probably going to happen upon a thing here and there that we find quite underwhelming.

It’s like a box of assorted chocolates. For the most part, odds are you’re going to enjoy whatever you grab. But then there’s also that off-chance that you’ll find you’ve taken a big ole bite of something that you can’t stand the taste of. But no matter how many times those random bites may let us down, we just keep going back for more in the understandable estimation that, even should it somehow go wrong again, at least it’s still chocolate.

And indeed, we do seem to live as if everything here is candy and thus the world itself something of the proverbial purveyor of such fine sweets as riches and fame. And while we can clearly happen instead upon such miseries as depression or loneliness or a sense of shame so very deep that we can’t bear to look at ourselves in the mirror, hey, the odds are still considered to be in our favor simply considering how vastly easy it so apparently remains to find that way of life that leads us finally to the riches and fame.

It just takes some time, a little trial and error, and thus a whole lot of trying what are only errors that we likely knew wouldn’t work out for anything that could even accidentally be considered good or decent or helpful. But again, such disappointments are just sure to come when all of life is an open door and we live as but the exhausted gatekeepers that simply can’t actually be expected to stand watch all hours of the day, right?

No, everyone deserves a respite now and then. We’ve all earned a little r&r haven’t we? I mean we’ve been working so hard to enjoy so much of what still remains a world in which there’s always more to experience. Which, granted, the sheer array of things that this world offers is something of a daily overwhelming that always leaves us feeling like we’re both running behind and missing out, but even those serve as quite reliable friends who are always there to get us back out there looking for more of what this world says we should enjoy.

Yet thus life slowly becomes a conveyor belt at the end of which we just sit ourselves with mouths and hearts and minds wide open unto the consuming of whatever anyone may send down the line. All because we’ve become reasonably aware that there’s just so very much here that we’re supposed to be enjoying or approving or experiencing and applauding that we haven’t the time in even the average 70-90 to taste and see even half.

Time’s awasting my friends!

We gotta get back out there every single day and partake of every single thing that anyone we meet may have reason to tell us all about.

Otherwise we’re probably missing out on what they’ll end up posting for the world to see and thus become almost instantly jealous of their having been the first in their particular circle to have dabbled in. And well, our arrogance and vanity just hates that thought of our not being first to find or feel something that turns others so green with such envy. And so, again, we daily just exist to rush all over the map seeking pretty much anything that we think might impress or elsewise please anyone.

We are literally walking checklists that are added to every single day thanks to a world that continues to evolve away unto their apparent expectation of what can only become a homogenous sort of elated hatred that finds everyone living as if they alone are living this life the best way it can be lived and thus everyone else is either missing out or simply a jerk for not cheering them on.

All because we’ve become quite widely convinced that life is again supposed to be lived within the width of worldly want and the excitement of wicked wish.

But it isn’t.

In fact, life is going to be one day proven of such narrowness that the vast majority of those who’ve ever lived it will find themselves being eternally stripped of everything that they grew to believe was life itself. Even unto the promised outcome that they themselves will lose the opportunity to go on living in light of their having given their first try to only trying all that was never alive and thus never able to give life.

And for those many it will be a day of such sorrow that they’ll probably just keep crying out that they’re sorry.

But it won’t matter because our words then will prove what our words now are so often so unwilling to say.

And that is that words mean nothing unless and until our actions match them. Otherwise they’re literally just air that is formed by a tongue that practices every manner of deception with which our hearts have filled over all these years spent lying and being lied to. For that is the true nature of what life here has in every way become. We’re all just people who practice dishonesty trying to hide our growing indignity and the fact that we can’t even digest any more of our disgusting way of life either.

Hence all the makeup and make believe that we’re all so fascinated by.

It just all offers us either a way to plausibly cover up the failures and flaws that we don’t want the world to see or a distraction from our having to see them ourselves. It’s why so many are still so easily entertained by the garbage being spewed out of hellyweird and the somehow still widely perceived legitimacy of “professional sports”.

What a crock.

But it’s all so widely loved because, again, we love to live wide open to basically anything the world says we should enjoy. For after all, they always know better than we do, don’t they? That’s why we spend so much time on social media, isn’t it? Always looking for the next thing we should try, the next look we should go for, the new outfit we need to buy? Always trying to find someone else to inspire us to be true to ourselves, as if we need the help seeing how selfish we’ve all become. Always all but begging to remain the products of such affluent influence that we sit all alone in our tiny little worlds cut off from life itself until we’re ready to take the world by storm with just how impressive we’ve become.

Friends, impressive isn’t really the word that we should be expecting to use for most of what’s going on in this world.

I have others, but I’m working on that whole gatekeeper thing and so we’ll just leave that there for now.

Because the point is that such is actually what we’re supposed to do. Not the part about trying to impress the world nor remain thus so wide open to the world’s always eager willingness to tell us just how to do what would help us be what they want us to become. No, the part about holding ourselves accountable and taking some personal responsibility for both who we are and what we become.

Because the truth is that we need less than no help from this world to become what we were made to be. And I say that because all this world has managed to help us be is simply walking replicas of such raunchiness and rebellion that it’s really no wonder depression continues to soar and so many are just always so angry that they seek to fill the voids inside with pretty much anything they can find that anyone else claims is good enough to make them feel whole again.

But friends, having carved so many holes inside ourselves seeking to fill them with worldly ideals, and having only managed to keep the emptiness no matter how much worldliness we’ve managed to find and believe that we actually enjoyed, I think we all know that continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results is truly insane.

I mean, if all the partying and getting drunk and watching porn and growing fat and staying lazy and mocking Jesus hasn’t filled us yet, I think we’ve plenty of reason to imagine that it never will.

Doesn’t mean the world’s going to stop trying as, well, it seems pretty clear every day that most here are just adamant to live their lives that way.

But that doesn’t mean that we should do the same.

No, such is at least part of the message of the cross. It’s that we’ve all lived that kind of life lost and yet were offered to be saved from the same by the Son who shed His blood to wash us clean of everywhere and everything we’ve ever been. But, granted, it’s really easy to see the narrowing involved in that. After all, if He came to make all things new right down to the point of putting new hearts and minds in the chests and heads of those who hope in Him, well then it would seem that those who do such a thing would be all but emptied of all they’d ever known.

And that seems like a lot to lose in a world that seeks only to gain.

And that leaves any who embrace such narrowing to be seen as fools who only stand to lose what everyone else is still seeming to enjoy. And that will plausibly cause at least some of those many to stop and wonder if maybe we freaks are on to something in light of how those who proclaim Christ seem to take on this sort of glow in life, a kind of happiness that’s just alien, a hope that nothing here has ever managed to offer.

And that will make those who deny God hate us even more as we become evidence that maybe narrowness is the only way to find true joy and self-worth and life’s meaning and our purpose and a kind of peace that is truly unlike anything known in this place. And since most here still believe that all of those things are still able to be found down here at rock bottom where so many are so happy to keep looking, they’ll just resort to doing whatever they can to make those who walk by faith look like fools so that they don’t have to.

And sure, there’s some sense of childish playground nonsense in there, but hey, gotta play to your strengths right?

And yeah, that probably sounds rude if not wildly intolerant in what is a world in which tolerance has become nothing more than drug that keeps the masses high on themselves, but thankfully I don’t care.

Because, as we’ve been talking, I’ve apparently happened upon an outlook on life that’s left me hidebound and thus unwilling to change or be influenced by new and modern ideas. I hate most new and modern ideas because all I see anymore is a world going down the drain as most folks just cheer on the flushing sound. I see folks who are so unhappy that I can’t find any logical reason to look to them to tell me what I should do to enjoy life. I see so many so filled with hatred that I don’t need their assistance in learning what love is.

I see so much deception and dishonesty that I honestly cannot imagine that folks actually believe half the nonsense that we’re being fed. I see so many getting so wrapped up in said nonsense that I’m rapidly losing hope of anything other than Revelation starting next week.

But I suppose that makes me the freak as I find this narrowness of mind that’s causing me to see things so very differently than most that I remain the one all alone over here on the fringes of this world daily begging folks to at least consider considering something different than the road most are choosing.

And because it’s also caused me to hate things that the world loves, which is in itself a bad thing because this world tells us that we’re not supposed to hate anything because that’s really mean and overbearing and offensive as we’re apparently just supposed to be happy that folks are choosing to race toward hell and all the suffering that we’ve been told awaits them there.

Sorry folks, but I just can’t do it. I can’t be happy about people choosing such an unending horror. And since I can’t, well then nor can I be found approving of what God has said is unacceptable or affirming what He’s planning on condemning or commending that which He says is abhorrent or applauding those who continue to live as if they need no such hope as that given us in Christ whereby we can find eternal life in our being turned from the death that this world has chosen to delight in.

I can’t do it. I cannot find anything of sin in which to ever again rejoice or affirm or applaud or accept. I hate it because I know well what it does to a person.

And well, being blinded is pretty much the worst possible way to find anything.

And yet we see the world keep trying.

Friends, my point is that down here we’ve been taught that we’re just supposed to go along with anything and everything that anyone and everyone claims they’ve found some way to enjoy. But the fact is that enjoyment and pleasure and other selfish ideals were never meant to become as important as this world’s fought to make them seem. If anything, they’re just death in masquerade.

And having experienced what it is to be alive, well, I want to keep on living. But having also tasted the bitterness of death as sampled in such things as guilt and shame, I also know that living in sin is the worst possible way to achieve that outcome.

And so I will hate that which is evil and ask God to help me grow more intolerant of it all the time. Why? Because I think we’ll all one day find that having a narrowed mind wasn’t quite the plague so many here so considers it to be.

Not considering how narrow is the way which leads to life whereas the wide only welcomes the unending loss thereof.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold