Day 3953 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Colossians 2:8 NIV

Counterfeit

There will come a day unto each of us, in varied time, in which we’ll all of the sudden feel this shaking almost as if someone is trying to wake us up from what we’ll then realize has been a life-long slumbering unto the stumbling we’ve been choosing here inside what will then be proven the greatest mass-delusion ever designed. And while this may sound unto most as just another conspiracy theorist’s joke, it isn’t. Because it’s promised that all will be changed and many thereof within the mere twinkling of an eye when the last trumpet sounds.

A call resounding to all that it will then be time for the perishable to put on the imperishable and the mortal with immortality.

Problem is that our chosen slumber has been swallowed in every decree of inhumanity and immorality that a fallen world could so invent with such blatant intent upon deceiving and being deceived.

All chosen simply because the majority here still, though the Light has come into the world, prefer vastly the dark for its hope that their deeds may stay as shrouded as they’ve long believed they were, a belief held simply because they’ve managed to not tell all their friends about all they’ve done in what have then been lives they’re somehow not proud of having lived. Which seems something of a failure on the part of this world’s decision to fall apart and invite all to join hands and sing along as it crumbles.

For the overarching desire for the mindset made amongst all, yes, all of mankind is for all of us to feel comfortable in our own skin as is achieved only when we, rather than dying unto the same, choose instead to continue living in the sins we’ve made our very best friends and give our lives entirety unto their protection, provision and even our proving that they’re not sins, mistakes, missteps at all.

No. Around here the very best outcome for which everyone seeks is the accomplishment of our having our proverbial cake while eating it all our lives until we’re all so fat and blind that we have to use our collective resources and understandings and abilities and perspectives to arrive upon either producing fat-loss drugs to help us shed the weight we eventually become ashamed of having packed on due to our steady diet of moral deception or we just convince one another that it’s rude to hold each other accountable and start parading our rotund selves through the city streets via billboards and TV commercials that boast the ability to take pride in what is an unhealthy way of life.

Thankfully we’re already there.

Challenge now becomes what we do about it.

Worry then is that we’ll mostly choose only more of the deceptions in which we delight as, well, such is what we’ve been sold for so long that we know now only to sell them ourselves.

And we’re doing so well at that that we too can afford the cake that our overlords are still insisting we eat while they tinker away with the rules and laws to make it seem reasonable to eat nothing but chemicals and chaos.

But hey, put a little sugar on top or some of that neon-orange tinted cheese flavor and we’re all yours!

Because all we know is fake. All of life’s become a lie. It’s all just some sort of deepening dishonesty that we honestly don’t seem to mind thanks to all the options from which we get to choose. Never mind that we’re only given so many flavors and failures to choose from because those lording over us have found it the easiest and thus most reasonable way to keep us all fat, dumb and completely mentally numb to the reality that we’ve not seen real life since 2007 or so.

A progression past what we knew that was first announced on January 9th of that year with the first model hitting the streets here in the US on June 29th.

Oddly enough one day after both mine and my sister’s birthdays.

And we’ve each somehow managed to feel the shift as we talk about this kind of thing often and always trace it back to right around the time when we were graduating high school in the mid 2000’s.

Just seems like the earth shifted at some point and all of the sudden all the things we knew and enjoyed growing up were replaced with things that fit in pockets and exist as rockets that inspire everyone to now stay inside because the world is pumped into their hand, going out only to maybe pick up an amazon order or grab a quick bite to eat before stealing back into their sin dens where they relish in the chance to find easier the darkness that makes it easier to never see, hear, know what all they’re doing or not.

All because we’ve all been got, to varying degrees, by the very counterfeiting of life itself. And of health. Of happiness. Of hope.

Of faith mostly.

Proven in that all the above have been replaced with versions distinctly depleted of what they once were. Indeed, if you’re old enough to have grown up pre-smartphone, pre-social media, pre-computer even, then you’ll too remember (I hope) that there was a time in which life seemed more alive. Colors were brighter. Buildings were bigger. People were nicer. Friends were friendlier. Fun was funner. Funny was funnier. Love was easier. Kindness too. We had so many things that we all loved to do and they involved being outside and not online.

What terrifies me is the reality in which there are some who are now either adults or getting well close who never knew that world. Kids today are infested and infected with technology to the point that even learning to drive is no longer a big deal as we’ve poured time and probably a ton of money into the invention of self-driving cars.

Proving perfectly both our growing laziness and too our willingness to thus succumb to robots doing our living for us.

Indeed, we’ve all but retired from trying to live a life simply because plenty of other people or plastic replacements are more than happy to do it on our behalf. This is something evidenced in the nightly news, social media, modern politics and the pundits which push it down our proverbial throats until we’re all so angry that we can’t help but feel as though we need to go vote in some sham election that offers us only the figment of a voice, a choice made simply because we’ve been filled with so much hate for someone we don’t even know that we we’re to go to blows with people we do know simply because of who got their vote.

And what’s impressive is that we like this!

Love it in fact!

Yes, we love this life spent lying on our backs playing the veritable whore to all manner of worldly wisdom and wanting and wishing and waiting with bated breath for the next version of the very phone we have in our pocket to be released so that we can again spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on something that is in no way better than what we have already, but something we have to have anyway because we have to show it off in order to retain our feeling of being welcome citizens in what’s now long-been a world of the walking dead.

A demographic defined in their lifeless expressions only barely glimpsed as they seldom peel their gaze away from screens through which they interact with the world that they’re both still surrounded by but have so removed themselves from that even something so simple as a stinking conversation sends some into fits of uncontrollable fear because they just don’t know how to talk to people as they’ve vastly forgotten how to be one!

Indeed, I’ve heard of such things as appointments for haircuts in which you can request a barber/stylist who doesn’t speak to you the whole time you’re there!

And yet we pat ourselves on the back because of how impressive we think ourselves to be here inside this endless sea of such progression as artificial intelligence now being leaned upon even for the writing of sermons to be spoken by a pastor on a Sunday morning to a congregation that’s probably watching from home because the Big C left so many so terrified of venturing outdoors that some never came back to life as is lived outside amongst these monsters call mankind.

Yes, we’re terrified of one another to the point in which we just hate each other because that’s what we’ve been taught to do.

Each of us thus eating every version of the Pharisees’ leaven in as heaping a helping as we can be helped to find by those who know right where to find it having eaten themselves drunk upon the very same delights and delusions such as the vastly common belief that we all know what we’re doing, that everything we’re doing is always right despite our each doing something entirely different than anyone else so as to stand out from the very crowd that we’re terrified of not feeling like we’re a part of anymore, and all of it glued together by a steady stream of venom and vitriol aimed at those who don’t see things the way we do.

Which is why they sought so fervently to kill this Jesus guy as He was making them look as bad as their pride and arrogance couldn’t allow them to see they’d become.

A history proven in how history repeats itself and we’re doing the very same things all over again.

Indeed, as I’ve said in posts now past, if Jesus came today the way He did back then, we’d see a world lining up to kill Him again.

Because despite so much having changed in regard to such things as technology and the ways in which it both encourages us to not think for ourselves and offers us the very apps and services that help do just that, nothing has changed in the ways in which we think, the ways we believe, the things we believe, the things we don’t.

Nope, we’re all little Adams and tiny Eves running around with the fruit of that tree in our pocket.

And if you don’t believe me, just look at the logo on the back of it.

And while there may be plenty of debate as to the meaning thereof, one thing is entirely off the table in terms of such disagreement and that is that those things have opened us up to learning more than we ever needed to know about things that we could have, and once did, live(d) just fine without.

That’s the life we lost in that shifting I mentioned above that hit somewhere in the mid 2000’s

It’s when we went from walking in our own little worlds defined by the city limit signs we tended to stay within, knowing then more about our neighbors and their lives and they ours, to our being so interconnected with one another on a global basis that we’re now being fed a daily diet of lies from all around the world that each threaten to instill doubt, denial, debate, hate, darkness, depravity, dishonesty as we’re all now entirely too quick to share something real fast so that we’re among the first who can tout we knew it all along and can prove ourselves right thanks to the timestamps.

I truly hate to say it but I think I must:

We’ve lost ourselves.

We’ve lost our minds. We’ve lost our lives. We’ve lost our hearts. We’ve lost our hope. We’ve lost our happiness. We’ve lost our health. We’ve lost our willingness to hear. We hate any teaching that doesn’t align and thus affirm our own personal perspectives, priorities and prerogatives. Won’t endure it. We’ll literally ask our barber to not say a single word to us just so we can hopefully avoid entering into a conversation in which we’re offended because of a difference in opinion.

And thus we’ve found our new golden calf.

Yes, this world has chosen this path in which those deemed or even self-considered to be the smartest, most intelligent, the singular superior in terms of understanding and comprehension, those among us touted as wisest are seen or believe themselves to be too smart to believe in God. All because we’ve either been or elsewise become convinced that it’s as if the human mind can reach a level of comprehension that can disprove things simply via thought and opinion.

Which basically defines rather well our world's wisdom:

It's just opinion.

That, and our somehow still-growing tendency to be offended by them.

All because we’ve indeed been taken captive by every hollow and deceptive philosophy known to man and even those yet to have been determined by man who are working endlessly to come up with new dishonesties that will keep us all continually distracted from the things we don’t want to think about, such as our own lives and how they’re going, and going to end, and how we’ve thus then less time remaining than we did even yesterday to figure out why we’re here, where we’re going, why we haven’t cared for however long we haven’t, what now to do about it and just how little we can that can make much of a difference.

Things we’ve all avoided worrying about or even acknowledging because we’ve been busy watching the staged football games that do indeed keep us just as entertained as those Romans that eventually used the Colosseum to kill Christians because it was apparently an enjoyable spectacle to see.

Hollow and deceptive philosophy.

Which is something defined simply as “the rational, abstract, and methodical consideration of reality as a whole or of fundamental dimensions of human existence and experience.”

Proving that it all depends on us and what we think, what won’t think about, why we don’t think about what we won’t and how it’s just easier to become offended and then angry because of any who dare suggest we might start thinking before the clock stops ticking and our tongues start confessing something that our lives may have never said before.

Leaving us then among those many that He’s said He will agree to having never known because they didn’t want to know Him for whatever reason someone else gave them.

A lie probably itself even counterfeit as we don’t even come up with our own dishonesty or deception anymore but simply repost the compost that someone else already shared from someone else.

A falsification they chose to believe because someone they’ve chosen to live blindly trusting because they post funny pictures or look real pretty.

Proving that we’re not even anymore worried about philosophy as, well, vanity’s an easier sell thanks to our all having become so worried about how we look to people who only look at their phones that we either all but kill ourselves with exercise and starvation diets where carbs are the enemy despite God having created wheat and corn and potatoes and their like, or we just throw off all restraint and toss our hats in that new ‘body-shaming’ scheme in which it’s deemed hateful to worry about the health and longevity of those we accidentally want to live long and enjoyable lives.

Proving then that we really would kill Jesus again because that’s literally what He said He came to accomplish for all of us, to have life and it to the full, a fact proven inside how He took our place on our cross to pay our debt so that we could avoid the second death we each so fully deserve thanks to all sin and deception we’ve let in.

Indeed, Jesus came to this earth to give His life as a ransom for many so that the very same could find in Him the hope of life spent in peace and joy for all eternity.

Jerk.

Or at least that’s what we’ve been taught to think. We in fact think so little of Jesus Christ that we use His name in vain every chance we get. Because it’s normal. It’s acceptable. In many circles it’s commendable if not actively expected. Why? Because it’s easier to mock what you refuse to believe than to sit down and ask yourself why you refuse to believe in something so amazing, so hopeful, so loving and merciful as the God of creation coming in human form to save a fallen humanity from the death they’ve lived choosing at His expense.

A hope so many reject just because they contend that it doesn’t make any sense because we can’t anymore even begin to comprehend a love like this that would lay down His life for those who hated Him and had no qualms in proving it.

Tell me again how we’re supposed to be proud of what we’ve become!

We can’t even believe in love anymore, a fact proven in how marriage is anymore only the surest way to get divorced as nearly half of all marriages end in the basic inability to tolerate living with that person you once said you loved and promised to do so for all of forever.

Yep, turns out that 7-8 years is on average how long it takes to realize the person you thought you loved was only someone you couldn’t stand.

But again, let’s get a round of applause for how well we’re doing as a society here inside our sharing of this philosophy that’s taught us all to just give up and walk away whenever anything gets hard or asks that we try in any way whatsoever, leading to such human traditions as divorce, global war, identity politics, sad-beige baby parenting, a corrupt and largely dangerous food industry, a massive problem with obesity, addictions to everything from food to drugs to pornography, a general lack of empathy, an over-abundance of comfort and complacency, a tendency toward doubt and denial, a love of debate, a worry over opinions, a willingness to fight against all forms of personal offense and thus again a refusal to believe in the Word of God simply because it wounds in order to help us see the healing we need.

Indeed, we’re killing it down here. Only problem is that “it” is ourselves and that because we’ve chosen to trust in man who have but breath in their lungs and no love left in their hearts as their lips are all that ever get close to honoring God in lives filled with evidence that they’ve ingested so much worldly wisdom and worry that they’re not worried about pleasing Him at all.

Because around here we’re the ones who better be pleased.

Because we just might kill you if we’re not.

For apparently that anymore justifies the taking of a life, something as simple as our not happening to like something someone else said. A lie we believe because we’ve become desensitized to even the very sanctity of life here inside what we’re all going to find has become only a counterfeit thereof.

I just pray we all realize that while we have time to do as asked and “come out from among them” and touch no more of their unclean things as we start packing our bags by emptying our sins out at the foot of the cross and begging Him daily not to give up on us.

Even though that’s exactly what we deserve having so roundly given up on Him.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold