Day 3909 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ephesians 5:6 NIV

Deceived

And it’s because of it that I now find an intolerance for such practices welling up in me. For life, in at least my feeble estimation, it’s not really something that should have been so allowed to be whatever this is that it’s so sadly become. In fact I don’t personal believe that we should have ever taken it upon ourselves to so usurp the authority to so define life’s condition so as to only ensure that it allows for such things as violence and deception.

No, what we’re living is nothing close to what God created life to be. But we all just continue to go along with it all because we are in fact deceived.

Because we’re honestly probably just afraid to be anything else at this point. I mean we’ve arrived at the place in time in which such practices as deception and the dishonesty that drives it so endlessly unto and then into our every existence have now existed for so very long that all of us who were born this far from Eden now just think them ordinary. We think that it’s supposed to be this way. We live as if what is is truly in such lack of any need for any change that none of us seek to change anything anymore.

And that for a list of reasons entirely too long to mention.

But suffice to say that it encompasses everything from the now common fear of man to the worry over the idols that our opinions have become all the way to the innate laziness not only alive but in every way allowed to thrive within all who are alive without the boldness of humility to ever seemingly question why. No, none seem to wonder as to why we’re here anymore. And that’s not that anyone ever really did. I mean there was a time there when the hunt for life’s meaning seemed something that at least some folks were at least a little interested in considering.

Even if only passingly and that even only passively.

And yet then it seems that something changed. Within all of my thinking about what it was and when it hit it seems that I’ve narrowed it down, at least for our current generation and those still alive alongside us who are in our mid to late 30’s, to roughly when I was in high school back in the early 2000’s. I believe that our current society’s upheaval began with the influx of cell phones and the many aps and algorithms which have since sprung both from them and for them.

For such are what’s given us all this platform upon which we can literally say and share just about anything that someone else may indeed come to hear. All of us have now what is a daily access to corners of this globe that those before us had only the faintest hint were even there. Indeed, we can now sit on a computer and order a cellphone from China and have it shipped across the ocean in a matter of days only to receive it and use it to scroll through the existences of those who’ve done settled for basically the same endlessly consumptive persistence.

And make no mistake, to consume is all we know to do as we’ve anymore so much to choose from that we’ve resorted to this bottomless pit kind of existence in which we feel as if it’s almost something of our personal responsibility to sample everything this world has to offer in the ongoing assumption that somewhere out there is that just right something that will finally make us feel like someone who matters or is at the very least happy again.

Indeed, I contend that anymore we don’t even know what happiness is because it has itself been so drown in delight and dopamine that we’re all but frozen in our feelings and yet oddly enough feel nothing.

Because our every joy comes from scrolling through an endless sea of politician and celebrity trying to pretend that we’re always both, never ever seeming to notice, let alone care, that everyone we’re following and idolizing has no idea that we’re even here nor that our interaction with the factions and distractions only invites unto our lives a discontentment that elsewise wouldn’t be there.

Yes, I believe that we’re so accustomed to hanging on the empty words of those we hold in awe and wonder that we’ve too come to wander so far from what life was meant to be that we couldn’t make our way back even though our lives really do depend on it and we actually have someone who is not only willing to help us get there but in fact died to lead the way.

And that’s because we’ve become so dead in our unholy matrimony with those who are still shouting “peace, peace” that we almost seem to enjoy the fact that there is no peace. We seem to kind of prefer this sort of hollow existence in which our greatest of intentions is nothing more than being offended and trying to never offend anyone else. We’ve become the proverbial doormats over which basically everyone is invited to walk all over and even don’t mind should they stop and wipe off their shoes on our faces as they do so.

Why?

Because they tell us that such is the surest road to peace. That our living to so agree to play their fool is for our very best interest. That they’re there to help us and that we can trust that they have our collective hope held as their only sole priority. That they want the best for us and are the only ones who can get us there so long as we make sure to vote for them, follow them on social media, buy their book, share their posts, wear their shirts and let them live our lives.

Never once paying any mind to the fact that we have our own lives to live and that the living of them never once had anything to do with such groveling before anyone else who is nothing more than a human like us, if not only a far more deceptive and thus deceiving exemplar thereof.

No, we don’t want to think about such things because we’re all well aware that all friendships rely heavily upon such things as trust and patience, and well, we’re always willing to be patient so that those we’ve come to serve can see that we trust in them as is done in our hopes of our having someday the many amazing things that they’ve promised unto their supporters.

Things such as peace, power, prosperity and whatever other personally bastardized priorities that we may have so grown to misunderstand that we think them actually given us via human heart or hand.

They’re not.

For people are just people and thus, like us, not at all so able to offer what they themselves have never actually had. Now granted, we can all easily see the success and adoration of those making millions making music and movies or those so commonly adored that sit in seats in offices that are ornate and oval-like. And as a people who simply continue to insist that seeing is believing, we thus continue in our believing that our seeing their successes means that they’re the bestest at living this life in what is our share of their sense of this need to have power and some platform from which to wield it in whatever way we may see fit.

And all of this has left us trying to fit the mold that they have made that oddly enough fits both in our pocket and even better in our hand having so held them so dearly ever since they took the world by storm nearly three decades ago.

Indeed, I am convinced that the cellphone has screwed us up in ways that there may well be no cure from. And that’s because we’ve turned them into these “smart” versions which have only served to connect us ever more fully to those who are more than happy to continue deceiving any they can with words so empty that they don’t even stop to think about what they themselves are saying.

All because it’s entirely too easy to agree with something when the one who says it is the same as they you voted for in the last election and you can’t bear the thought of admitting you were caught in the excitement of change that we all knew wasn’t really coming. They said it was and promised us all the wonderful ways in which they promised it would come and how much better off we’d all be once they got in and it got here.

But alas, the expected blockbusters always carry that risk of being only a flop and every celebrity is only a persona who makes a living playing other people while our other idols continue to play the people for fools as they do nothing but argue amongst themselves and laugh as all of us underlings do their daily bidding in what is a collective assault on the very fabric of life itself.

For no, what we’re witnessing on an almost daily basis is that a house divided really cannot stand, and that because when you can’t stand those you share the house with, well, not much good is probably coming from that.

But those in power and with platforms will never tell you that. Rather all we hear is all about how much better they’re working so hard to make things or how excited we should be for their next album that’s probably been written by other people and thus filled with songs that didn’t mean enough for them to come up with on their own.

All of it leaving us owned by those who sought the same power and purpose that all of us have longed to have and find only to have had a better ability to lie and steal than we could ever agree to.

And yet we continue to agree to worshipping those who are but human beings in this ongoing belief that they surely wouldn’t lie to us, lead us wrong, leave us for dead. No, they seem like such nice people. They tell funny jokes and say silly things. They always look so nice and dress so well. And besides, they’re loved and followed by everyone else and so we probably should as well as, well, surely not everyone who follows them and allows them to become idols and thus hangs on their every lie could be that wrong.

Right?

Friends, our society is so upside down anymore that our best chance of finding what’s right is just leaving it all behind and doing all we can to do everything that nobody else is.

I mean, is that not basically the idea of doing a new thing?

And considering how that’s what Christ said He came to do and left here to prove He had in fact done, and how well that worked out for all the few who really do turn and place their every hope and trust in Him, isn’t that then exactly what we should do?

Something new? Something different? Something alone if needed? Indeed, should we not shoulder the responsibility of our living our lives responsibly enough to understand that all of this lying and deceiving is probably not in any way conducive unto our finding of this mythical better that everyone here claims they know how to find but never manages to actually show off? I am sick to death of all these folks parading in three-piece suits talking about how they know the way to everything better and just need our vote or for us to buy a ticket on opening weekend or wear their jersey or buy their record to get us there.

People here have no idea what better is because we’ve all become so deceived that we live amongst a great and growing many who think we’re already there.

Because again, we’ve got smartphones that we can use to buy pretty much whatever we want only to get it and go right back to scrolling through instabook seeking the next thing we’ll by then need to be that next step closer to those six-pack abs and ever elusive world peace.

It’s all just become a joke in which very little is funny and the only punchline is those in line getting punched in the gut every time they come to find that they were wrong to so believe in those who so clearly exist only to deceive and be deceived.

Because we should all be able to tell that betterment isn’t a social priority. Nor that humility is becoming the new trend. Nor that modesty is making a comeback. Nor that honesty will ever be popular. Nor that the truth has a chance of trending. Nor that we’re tending to only get worse as the world around us only grows daily the same as all of us join in this practice of pretending that peace is something we’ll happen to find the more we fight amongst ourselves in regard to who is wrong and who is right in regard to where it’s found.

Friends, peace does not exist in this place, and in all honesty, it never will. No, peace is something that resides alongside such things as purpose and the personal responsibility that seeks it only. Thus peace exists only in Christ and we’ll only find it when we find that He had to come find us because we too were so darn lost that we couldn’t tell which way was up having sunk so far down into the depths of human delight and deception that we too thought that money and fame might be Him.

Because that’s what we’re told. That money can buy you happiness. That being famous will make your life matter more. That having more means you’re worth more. That measuring our worth in worldly wealth is the only best way to ensure that we’re even here at all. That less is more but more is less and having less than more means you’re less and so you need to have the more in order to not feel like less than those who have so much that they see no need for peace or hope or joy as they exist convinced that such things are proven in quantity.

Leaving then our quality of life to have taken a nosedive from which none of can walk away without He who is our only hope telling us to take up our mat and go and sin no more.

But we don’t want to hear that because we’ve lived at the service of those who are lazy and filled with greed for everything wicked and wrong that such are all we know of life as well. To just continue doing as the Romans always have all while acting completely shocked that we continue to live as Romans ourselves who line up with grills in tow every Sunday morning to watch the modern iteration of the Colosseum hoping our bets placed in the gambling app pay out so that we can buy that bigger house that we need to store all the junk we’ve amassed trying to please and impress all of those who think that life consists in such.

Never once then ever realizing that it was the Romans who crucified Christ and how we’re thus throwing our hat in with their outlook upon His existence every single time that we turn a blind eye to doing something so boring as reading the Bible to opt instead for delving head-last into a comment section war of words simply because we live for the drama as opposed to the discipline of Christ’s discipleship.

All because we’ve all been told that such is how life is supposed to be lived by those who want us to live listening only to them so that they continue to have this feeling of control over us as they watch us waste away in what is a life in which none of have lived for years thanks to our every worry being given only ever unto what someone else is doing or what so-and-so just said.

Friends, who cares?

Honestly, that should be our most common response to just about everything this world wants us to focus on or care about. Who cares? Why? Because we shouldn’t! We shouldn’t care as to whatever everyone else is so consumed with at the moment. Why? Because we’ve been told that it’s in such breadth that the road to hell itself is paved and that there be many who are walking widely upon it. And too that we’re all thus called to come apart from them, touch none of their unclean things, and that in so doing He will accept us.

He who?

He who holds the keys to life and death and has promised to reject anyone who spent their lives treating Him as if He wasn’t worth knowing as they instead lived only to know those who were never Him but only acted as if they were bigger and better.

Indeed, we’ve become a people willfully blinded by this blanket trust we’re supposed to have in those we know are lying to us. We know they are. We know that so much that’s going on doesn’t really matter. We know that so much of whatever people are in an uproar over won’t actually turn the tides of history. We know He who offered us a share in His victory over death itself!

Why then are we still losing our lives to those lost inside this maze of those crazed into thinking that this world matters more than forever might?

Friends, it’s time to get back to living life and the doing of such has nothing to do with basically anything this world is living for. No, we can not only live without all the lies and idolatry and petty arguments exploding all around us anymore, but we can actually thrive better without them. Can you imagine what it would be like to have no idea as to the latest outrage or to live so holding our feelings unto the flames of petty debate? Can you imagine the peace of knowing less of this place and thus less of the worthless battles that herein rage?

Look, my point is that we’re all looking for peace but that peace isn’t coming until Jesus does, and that even then it will only be found and felt by those who lived their lives looking and listening to Him, not them who wanted us to give them His place in our hearts and hopes.

So let us stop casting our pearls unto the swine of this world. For hope and happiness are worth more than being trampled by those who exist only to deceive, distract and destroy.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold