Day 3995 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Corinthians 6:12 NIV

Mere human rules

Such is what it seems all but all of life has become so vastly consumed by, interested in, arguing over even that anymore all we can ever be is but the same slaves we always were before. And that’s because in the end it won’t matter what rights or legalities we may wish to attach or have elsewise attached to our arrogant estimation of that which is right and the more we feel is not. No, all that’s going to matter is what all we used this freedom we’ve been given to do, to be, to become as combined of both the above.

Guess then the question again becomes both freedom for what and too what from.

And yet what seems so increasingly strange is this increasing strain found amongst this collective brain by which we gather together and measure whatever it is that we seek to jointly agree is the right thing to be, the best thing to do, the truest form of whatever it is that we’re seeking to know or at the very least show we might. Indeed, it seems as though all of life is nothing more than our each trying to prove that we know what we’re doing, and that so very much that our ideals are anymore pressed upon those around us in what is this attempt to make for our understandings a legal standing that we contend would then justify our opinions.

But that’s truly all that all human rules and laws and other such measurements of truth, morality and reality really are.

They’re but our understandings as are to be always based almost exclusively upon our opinions which are themselves always the victims of what is a personal bias so biased that it’s based only in us and thus likely never to be fully understood nor then agreed upon by the rest of our fellow felons. All because we all have at least slightly skewed versions of everything from what matters most to the best way to uphold those ideals, and perhaps even more than anything anymore, what all is deserved by those who fail to uphold what we think to be nigh essential unto the proper function of life itself.

And we’ve got some doozy ideas!

Unfortunately what I think we’re starting to see, and I truly hope realize too, is that allowing the inmates to run the asylum is probably not the best thing to do. Why? Because there’s a reason we’ve each been given only so much say in regard to the way this life goes. There’s a reason that our personal freedom is ours alone. There is a reason that we will all answer for only what we’ve done in this life just before the next one has forever begun.

And that’s because God knows that we’re broke. Not that He made us that way. In fact He created us to be so much like Him that He even gave us His image and placed His Word in our hearts and entrusted His will (the very desires He has for all of life and the designs He himself has drawn so as to ensure they come out like He created them to) inside the human heart and deep within the mind of the same. He created us to be the same as Him, a little lower granted as, well, there can only be one God as any other setup would only lead to confusion in regard to who has the final say.

Confusion like that we see unfolding around us every day.

And that’s because we’ve taken what was created in His image and instead sought to fashion it into what’s basically an idol that we seek to serve via this selfishness that’s anymore both so inept and yet impenetrable that all we seem as if we can ever be is both what we’ve all already been and that, well, is only assured that we know what we’re doing and, thanks to pride, that we’re always right in doing it.

Doesn’t even matter what the ‘it’ is.

All that matters is that we want to do it and we’ve created a system of public thought, or at least a personal offshoot of the same, in which we’re collectively of the brain to just write or rewrite the rules based upon what we think best to do. Or be. Or wish to see or really hope we don’t ever have to again.

But friends, the problem is that, again, whenever we give the pens to those as illiterate as we’ve all always been here inside this blanket ignorance to both God and His Word, well, turns out that all we’ll turn out is just this ongoing report of all we think we’ve the right to do as is being done as is matched with unequal parts of what more we think is wrong that we thus don’t delight to do.

Yet it always comes back to us being the ones who get to so pick and choose.

As if we can and not mess anything up. Despite our world drowning daily in the evidence that we don’t have any idea what we’re doing nor thus any feasible way to do it right much less become and remain this insistent that we might. Indeed, every single day seems to devolve into this discussion/disagreement as to who among us it right about something, leaving then the other half always wrong whilst they take their stand on the other side of these lines that we ourselves have drawn and see us as the ones mistaken.

And all of this is being done by we who are but obnoxiously dumb humans.

I say that because, well, I don’t seem all that able to believe that all that many are at all that happy about the state our world is in and, despite each of us knowing both the right things to do and thus the rights we have to do those right things, nothing seems to ever improve.

Ever.

Rather it seems, and I think that most would agree, that the system is broken and thus in need of some version or measure of revamping.

Problem is that anymore we’re all so busy safeguarding our alleged “rights” that all we seem to find aren’t ways to fix what’s broken but rather all of these apparent beliefs that we’ll get further in the needed fixing by simply blaming others for trampling our rights, doing what we don’t think they should, failing to see why we think the way we do, and thus continuing to choose to only continue to fail to see things our way which we believe would surely fix everything.

But friends, how can than ones who’ve broken that which is broken, and mostly either ignored the problems or simply resorted to blaming someone else once they happened to see them, how can they then be the ones to fix anything?

That’s like asking a monkey who escaped from the zoo to turn himself in and do what the zookeepers asked him to.

He left because he has his reasons to not want to be there anymore, and in all truth, the right to not be held inside such captivity as what’s basically just a living piece of public entertainment.

And indeed, there are even those still busy arguing either for or against such a life for what are wild animals who thus weren’t created to live in cages.

A decent argument to make.

Problem is that we argue about everything and thus never get anywhere.

All because we think that’s something we not only have the right to do but the very necessity to do incessantly seeing as how we’re seeing all these rights we think both we and others have elsewise being trampled on by those who, though in the same place surrounded by the same things somehow only see at least some things, if not at this point everything, differently.

Indeed, we live in a world filled with so many perspectives and points of view that we’re all daily scrambling to figure out what to do to please everybody.

And that right there is the problem!

It’s that we’ve arrived upon this system in which the grandest of all intention is to ensure the basic God-given liberties and opportunities are ensured unto all. Which they all were all along because, as He gave them, well then none can take them away.

Not sure then as to all this confusion we have.

But where it seems that all such things start to fall apart is that we again prove only able to start from where our opinions begin. And that because our opinions are based upon our understandings, which, while they’ll always make sense to us in light of the way of life we’ve lived and the things we’ve seen, heard, learned along the way, the fact is that those aren’t the same things that someone else has come to understand.

Because we’ve all been given quite different journeys filled with what are varied interests, ideas, abilities that thus all combine to make our lives unlike any of those being lived by anyone else. That’s where this now dead and gone idea of walking a mile in someone else’s shoes came from. It was this general premise whose purpose was always to remind us that someone else is just that, someone else. That their life wasn’t our life. That they’d experienced things we hadn’t and we’d experienced stuff they probably never would.

It was this overall attempt to aim us toward a basic humility that would always act to readily remind that we’re all slightly different and thus could never fully know anyone else’s mind, nor thus ever fully understand their point of view.

But we could try.

We could at least attempt to work together. We could desire to do that which moved toward the good of the group. We could, as Scripture asks, seek for that which accomplished mutual edification. Edification being the “instruction or improvement of a person morally and/or intellectually.”

But that seems where it all was destined to fall apart. Because, well, morals and intellect have both long since taken a backseat to what are these staunchly held beliefs in our own personal rights being so darn important that even the basic fundamental needs of others are anymore seen as afterthoughts only thought about after we’ve ensured our own rights aren’t infringed.

Indeed, we’ve become each so very selfish that we will look for our best interests well before we ever start worrying about even the existence of anyone else.

And yet we live as if that’s the right thing to do simply because we’ve become a world that continues to choose to buy this lie telling us that it’s always best to look out for number one and live our truth.

Things we again continue to contend we’ve not only the right to do but are thus the only right things to do.

Are they?

Bible tells us to not think so highly of ourselves but to rather, in humility, regard others as more important than us. Tells us too that those who wish to be first must instead become last, the very servants of all in fact. Says that whatever we’ll not do for another is the same as that which we’ll be found eternally guilty of having not done for the Son. Tells us that whosoever looks at a sister or brother with hatred in their hearts cannot then love God whom they can’t look at.

Tells us even further that anyone who hates their brother or sister is a murderer.

Even if they think they have the right to hate them because of some difference of opinion.

And yet still we live as if we’re doing right in arguing about our rights right up to the point in which we’re now a society so divided that families are turning on themselves, people are losing friends over political differences, our cities are erupting into protests that oddly enough always seem to inevitably turn violent as people are shot or elsewise hurt whilst buildings are burned and chaos rises to the top of our interests, priorities, prerogatives and even our measure of our purpose.

Indeed, we’re a people who anymore seem always willing to resort to harm or hatred over something so simple as a mere difference in perspective.

Willing to kill because we see things different.

Each side acting justified in what they do and how they respond and thinking then, apparently, that egging all of this on will somehow help us accomplish the sort of change we all seem to know we need alongside a now violent unwillingness to change anything at all.

No, instead we just wake up every single morning once again ready and roaring all about only our rights and how anyone who doesn’t agree with us is then wrong and should be at the very least silenced if not met with the violence we feel a justified reaction to what we measure to be our rights, or that which is right, being in any way infringed upon by those who themselves refuse to budge.

And sure, there’s a clear hypocrisy in this, that much I must admit.

For indeed, I myself have certain beliefs from which I won’t move nor be moved. Such as my faith. There’s a reason I drag myself out of bed every morning to write these posts even though I’d usually rather stay warm and hopefully not quite so tired. It’s because I feel in my bones that this matters. Can’t prove it does as it obviously seems to be making absolutely no difference.

And yet I’d die before I gave up and walked away from this faith that I have in not merely these words shared from His Word but in fact my faith in He who wrote them for us to be bettered by them.

So yeah, I suppose I’m a hypocrite after all. But friends, truth is we all are. For all us are again biased in some way or probably about a billion others. All of us have our understandings that will always make more sense to us than those of someone else who’s arrived at a very different perspective than us. We all will always manage to skew things in just such a way that leaves us looking as those right, those honest, those moral, those wise in fact.

And yet, what’s wise about that way of life in which we spend so much time seeking what is mere human agreement?

That’s what I don’t understand about any of this. Our world is daily drowning in this desire to all but set each other on fire in order to beat our beliefs into one another. We’re all so adamant, insistent and incessantly so in regard to those things we feel we’ve the right to do, to have, to be that what we have become is nothing but bodyguards for rules.

The very rules we ourselves bend or break whenever we once again need them to shift a little so that we don’t have to.

All because we want always to feel justified, validated, entirely appropriate in the saying or doing or thinking or believing in or of all that we are.

But friends, if we’re that sure about what we’re doing then why do we need such public agreement as having it written on the books somewhere? If we’re assured that we’re doing what’s right, what does it matter if anyone else disagrees? Do we need consensus to do what we feel we ought to? Just because we have the right to seek such agreement, and that right is so clearly what most here think is right to do, does that mean that we have to?

Do we need this world or anyone in it to guarantee our rights?

Can man give rights to man?

Can man take rights away?

Are we truly in God’s place?

No. No we are most certainly not! And that’s a very good thing because, well, our every life has shown for itself that we will skew or misuse whatever we need to in order to make it look like we’re right in doing whatever we’ve determined to do. We see it all the time. Just like this verse plays out. Sure, we have all sorts of rights to do all sorts of things. In fact God has granted us each the right to a freewill that allows us to choose for ourselves everything we choose to say, be and do.

Does that right really make right everything we say and do, everything we then become?

We have the right to say anything, right? Has everything we’ve ever said proven helpful to those who heard it? We have the right to do anything, right? Has everything we’ve ever done always proven to the blessing or benefit of those to whom it was done? We have the right to believe anything, right? Does that make it right whenever someone else believes they’ve the right to take a life? We have the right to become anything we want to be, right?

Does that make it right to have become sinners in such need of salvation that we instead, in shame, seek only ways to rewrite things in such a way that allows us to think, to believe that we don’t need Christ in our lives but can rather get by just fine without Him?

Friends, look around at what we’ve become without Him being welcome!

Is everything you see going on in our world what you would consider right?

Maybe I’m mistaken, been there before, but from where I stand it sure seems like things are getting worse.

All because we’ve become of the belief that we’ve the right to believe that both things can’t get better and we’ve thus no reason to try toward that goal.

Does that make it right for so many to have simply given up?

That’s the issue folks! It’s that so long as mere humans continue writing the rules seeking to ensure that humans never look wrong, our fallen ideas and desires will continue designing the direction all of life goes. And yeah, we again have the right to live this life that way. We’ve proven that all but perfectly! But friends, what in the past tells us that we, in either chasing our rights or denying our wrongs, can be the ones who lead the way to a better and brighter day?

The world’s as dark, if not darker than ever before!

And yet all we hear anymore is about all these rights we have and how we’re right in always fighting so much about them.

But friends, rights stop being right when they cause us to do wrong. Rights stop being right whenever they lead us to anything which is harmful for anyone. Rights stop being right just as soon as they step over the line that God has already drawn separating right from wrong.

Rights can indeed become wrong should they ever inspire us to do as the Author of life itself has told us not to.

Yeah, anymore it seems to most that we have the right to fight, argue, all but inevitably arrive at just hating everyone around us. But friends, how can that help us? How can we be bettered by that idea? How is this life going to be improved, much less the world in which we live it, if all we continue to care about is what we ourselves think is best for ourselves alone?

We’re not here by ourselves but are rather surrounded by they who are too the very same creation created of God. And yeah, we all get things wrong and fall quite well short of who He created us to be.

But friends, we have to stop seeking for ways to make that seem anything else and rather allow it to inspire us to get some help in righting this ship.

Because all this fighting about our rights and what we feel justified in doing, it ain’t helping.

And that because maybe our rights and the things we feel we’ve the right to do aren’t the things we need to be doing. Because maybe we humans don’t know what matters most.

Maybe we need to be far more humble than we’ve become in these lives lived worried so much about ourselves all the time.

After all, God gives us our rights and His design will always lead us the right way, even to everlasting life. I’m pretty sure our understandings of our worldly rights and all these laws we’ve had to write seeking to protect them from oddly enough ourselves or those like us, I don’t think that approach can say the same.

My point is that we need to always focus on God and doing what He calls us to do, not what we’ve since become convinced we have the right to try. For liberty can be a great thing when used the proper way.

Problem is we’ve long since chosen the right to see things far from properly and thus liberty itself has become a master of sorts.

Let us not die as slaves to our rights.

Rather let us do what God says is right and we’ll not have to worry about much else.

Most of all what’s nothing more than mere human agreement.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold