Day 3999 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 15:9 NIV

Everything is vanity

Which is what’s caused this culture of this most increasingly cancerous confusion as even vanity itself has what are two diametrically opposed definitions that stand in what is a blatantly stark contrast even unto each other. For vanity is defined firstly as an “excessive pride in or admiration of one's own appearance or achievements” and yet then secondly as something which is found in “the quality of being worthless or futile.” And so vanity itself is this immense overvaluing of oneself in what is an undertaking that obviously then feels great to the ego which drives all of us.

All to arrive all of us at an outcome that is an opinion of ourselves and thus our undertakings and understandings that are themselves worthless and futile.

Why?

Because it all becomes all about us who are but measly little scumbags who’ve barely even a decent thought in our heads most days, even when said heads are all put together in what’s an increasingly rare working with one another, as opposed to our apparent preference for working against each other, for what is the collectively agreed upon seeking for the proverbial good of the group.

A goal which itself eventually devolves into a widely perceived impossibility in light how vanity is again, at first, an excessively high opinion of oneself. For when one is left unto themselves, pride can cause some problems or personal refusals to admit the presence thereof, causing consequences for the person alone. But when gathered together and there inevitably allowing the pride of the crowd to mix and combine together, well, what you’ll find is a pride so lost that nothing good can be found.

Because a whole bunch of people thinking way too highly of themselves is only ever going to arrive the whole at this idea in which nothing can be improved as they’ve rather, apparently, gotten everything figured out thanks to the collectivity of their humbled willingness to gather together for what each will leave thinking was merely their opportunity at teaching all the others what is their way to the perfection that each involved actually believes they’ve themselves already achieved.

We literally watch this unfold pretty much every single day anymore.

Some call them protests. Others prefer to refer to them as riots. Some are congregated in the streets of some metropolis whereas the others are held in the very halls of congress. Some are attended to by hundreds others gather together thousands who each, despite the number, are made up of they who are so convinced that they alone know the better way for something to be done that they simply must attend and yell and scream and argue as loud as they can so that the rest of the crowd will leave both awed and improved.

All for having had the rare opportunity to stand not in the presence of those who may have a better idea toward a bettered outcome, no, but rather to have the many others present to stand in their presence and there bask in their self-perceived perfection as has been achieved via their doing consistently of the things that they themselves have determined to be those most worthwhile to do.

For again, everything anymore simply eventually devolves into this desire to see ourselves as the only ones with the fire strong enough, big enough, bold enough to help all the others find the way to what we ourselves are already convinced we’ve found and, in our estimation of humility, found our way back from so as to guide others toward.

Yes, each of us are so mentally loose that we all live as if we’re here to lead the others to what we alone think to be best for all.

All because what we’ve become is so excessively assured of our own perfection in either ability, opportunity or outcome that we feel it anymore our very duty to discharge our devotions unto leading the rest of creation unto their seeing of everything our way so that they too can find those things which we’ve settled for seeing as this outcome that defines us as being as good as we can get.

Never once seeing that everything is worthless.

It’s useless. It’s pointless. It’s all without purpose as there can never be any real promise there to be proven within any measure of what’s probably a delusion desired by the diluted who are so stubbornly determined to either defy or define or even defend the darkness living within them that all they do is only done in a self-preservation of sorts.

Such is this awful idea that is affirmation.

It’s nothing but the collective assumption that what’s always best for everyone is to be whoever they already are doing still whatever they’ve done to get them there. It’s basically nothing more than standing in approval of whatever already is, which, when combined with the other’s already proven tendency toward thinking the same, convinces then everyone involved that the best has truly been accomplished.

But look around my friends!

What is best about what we’ve become?

And yes, I’m talking both as a society but even as each of us personally. What are we that’s so stinking amazing that the mere suggestion that there could be something better is seen as a lie so offensive that it’s worth what’s even become losing friends and severing families? Bible wasn’t kidding when it said that one’s enemies would end up being found within their own family and circle of friends!

For here we are. We’re walking a world so widely filled with hatred and yet assurance is what’s led the way. Because we’re each convinced of both so many things that matter (that don’t), that we’re right in our estimation or understanding of them all (which we’re probably not), that we’ve thus again this right/duty to tell everyone all about everything we think and every opinion we have (which we shouldn’t), all so that they too can become whatever it is that we’ve come to believe ourselves to be.

(Which isn’t nearly as worthless and futile as any would dare imagine they are).

No, all of think that everything we’re doing is what we should be doing and that we’re so right in doing it then that nothing can go wrong because we’ve become convinced that we can’t mess up, won’t make mistakes, could never in a million years even misunderstand anything. Rather we’re each these creations of such unbridled perfection in everything from knowledge to understanding that we needn’t even listen to anyone else as we can’t possibly learn anything more.

We’ve got it all figured out!

Only problem is that we’re wrong about most of it and most of it doesn’t matter anyway.

A problem which only compounds once seen inside the church!

For it’s one thing, and a hard scene to watch to be sure, to stand on the outside of the world watching millions walk daily in the very same direction doing only the same things they’ve been doing that have led us all collectively to what’s become a society so stagnant and stupid that it’s amazing we’re even still alive at this point what with all the protests and riots and rage and violence that we apparently feel all but obligated to measure out upon those who just refuse to see things from our far more perfect point of view.

That’s hard, feel it in increasing measure literally every single day.

But when this excessive pride and thus self-assurance sneaks into the hearts of those either standing in pulpits or barely listening to the words said from those standing there, it’s a recipe for what’s sure to be a disaster of both Biblical and thus eternal proportions.

Why?

Because God never asked us to figure it out.

He never called us to become so convinced that we had that we’ve have no way to see any room still left for growth in such things as holiness, humility or hope. Rather He calls all of us unto an ever-increasing holiness by which we continue to grow apart from the world and thus learn to leave more and more of its ways behind.

Why?

Because the ways of this world are foolishness to Him. They’re stupid. They’re worthless. They are so eternally without merit that He came to meet us to tell us that what we’re doing just isn’t working so that we could learn, in humility alone, to do something else. Because, let’s be honest, anything else is sure to be better at this point.

Again, just look around!

Anymore there’s some new heart-shattering controversy uncovered in the church at least every week. So much dishonesty and deception, so much sexual perversion covered over by again this need for self-protection, so many stories of so many people seeking for only their glory as is gained, as far as the rest of the world estimates, in this seeking of praise and applause from people. Indeed, we have put so much faith and trust in those who’ve but breath in their lungs that we’ve next to nothing of faith or trust left to put in anything or anyone else.

And most of the time it’s us!

We’re the ones we trust. We’re the ones we love! We’re the ones we look to and lean on to lead the way, so much so that we again become of this mindset in which we’re meant to be leaders and the rest of the others are meant only then to follow us doing as we do so they too can find that kind of life in which they don’t lose or make mistakes or get confused either.

And indeed, that’s yet another synonym of what vanity is!

It’s self-love, and well, tell me there’s not a more prevalent pursuit than that these days!

We’re all all about this idea. We love to love ourselves! In fact we again seem to feel it almost our obligation to love ourselves, an obligation we’re more than happy to oblige!

Why?

Because of our excessive pride that has us convinced that we ourselves are as good as it gets!

We are all our own gods!!

And we prove we’re of this mindset in nearly everything we do anymore.

It’s in the way we walk, the things we say when we talk, the manner in which we approach worship and how best we ourselves think it done. And yet, unto us, worship is seen as but a 3-song concert sung on Sunday morning for 15 minutes before a 30-45 minute sermon that we fall asleep during because the show just took it out of us.

That’s in fact all that we think church is!

It’s a building we all pile into once a week. It’s the only place that God can hear us when we pray or speak. It’s the shelter of those who aren’t sinners but know all the ways to help everyone else who is. It’s indeed remained a den of thieves who rob those around them of every better still there laid out before them by telling them that either they’re already as good as they can be or the very best God can give them is just fortune or fame or fun.

That’s our worship of Him. We sing a couple songs with choruses that repeat 20+ times and then sit in silence as some dude in a fancy suit, or these days track suit, if not swimsuit, talks at us for 45 minutes about either how great we’re all doing or how much more God has in store if we’ll just give that offering plate a little bit more too.

That’s it.

It’s all bottom dollars and a loss of common sense. Because common sense should help us see that He’s owed more than just some flowery words said passionately once a week or whenever we happen to find ourselves in need, though that could never possibly happen considering again how perfectly our lives are going.

And yet the only thing then ever found striving is just this pride that keeps on driving us to keep on doing what’s all but already divorced us both from true faith and thus the true God who’s not seen as our Father anymore but rather our friend. Yes, we want God to be nothing more than some great big teddy bear in the sky who’s only there to dry our crying eyes pouring out those probably fake tears found in our fear not of failing Him but our failing again to get whatever it is that we want so badly that we’ve become convinced we deserve it.

Yes, we think we’re the ones who deserve things, that we’re owed things in light of how perfectly our lives are going and thus how wonderfully we’re doing everything, which is only the few things that we agree to keep doing as we feel them the ones that we do best.

That’s worship to us. It’s nothing more than our own personal measure of what we alone believe to matter as is often only those things that we think we’re really good at doing.

For some it’s singing and so their worship of God is sung in songs that sound real nice and are easy for the crowds to follow along. For others it’s beauty and so they paint themselves up like these images of human perfection who are adored by the masses. For still others it’s riches as proven in how much they toss in that plate in what’s anymore perhaps only an expectation that it’ll come right back to them.

For all of us though, well, it’s again just about whatever it is that we think we’re good at.

We don’t worship Him in the worries we have or the pain we feel or the fear we find because we feel no fear and have no pain and worry of nothing but whatever it is that still we want of what is a world that still houses our treasures, pleasures and successes. All because we can see them and thus find them easily enough to prove unto us that we were right in our wanting them more than we ever dared worship Him who we can’t see and thus easily forget.

Because it’s easy to overlook what you’re not looking for while you’re busy trying to find only ways to further perfect or protect those things that make you who you are, which, in our world, is probably a broken person who can’t see any of the cracks or flaws.

All because we’re all too perfect already to have any.

So perfect in fact that we continue believing that we can honor God in what are merely words spoken in a language that sounds really nice to ears that hear but never care to listen. That we can bring Him glory in our going always after only more of that which pleases us or makes us feel good or look good to those we think are watching, waiting for us to prove the next step toward an even greater perfection. That we prove Him faithful only in lives so able to look so wonderful that everyone else wants to be just like us.

As if He’s only faithful when we’re not failing or afraid or hurting or lonely or confused or complacent or carrying the weight of so many burdens that our backs are breaking and our hearts are too.

Friends, what if we could worship Him in those things?

Granted, we’d have to lose this idea that our lives are perfect and thus us perfect at making them so. But what might we find in that kind of life that’s willing to lay down every preferred pretense in exchange for the chance to worship Him as He asks us to, as He created us to?

To worship Him in Spirit and in truth!

That’s what we’re missing in our world today. There is no truth in our spirit. There’s no honesty in our humility. There’s not a single shred of decency ever to be found in our dancing still through the darkness where the world hides trying to find a little more of their applause we feel we’re owed. There is no hope in our still hoping to find anything in, of or from this world!

Because this world doesn’t deserve any of our worship, our worry, our want. Why want for anything in the one place we claim to believe we’re leaving?

Why not want for an unending growth in love and praise and appreciation for the Father who is one day going to determine where we spend the rest of forever?

A Father who is by no means pleased with vanity or arrogance or ego or pride or lies or lives lived in or for all the above!

For He calls us explicitly unto such things as humility, honesty, modesty, morality.

You know, all the things scarcely seen inside this society!

Friends, for so long now our every understanding of everything from God to faith to hope to Heaven has been mixed with the leaven of those living as if they’re not leaving and thus have no need to try and please or praise He who they must then think they’re never going to meet. Does that sound like a good idea? And if it doesn’t, because it isn’t, then why continue doing anything this world does, thinking anything this world thinks, allowing anything this world believes to in any way confuse what you claim you know in your heart?

Leave this place!

Not because we’re going to be in Heaven today but we can at least be on our way.

Because we should be on His way, in His Way.

We are called to be in Christ, the body to He who is the Head. But friends, how can we be something so special when all we think special is just ourselves?

The time has come for us to be done with all vanity as it’s never going to prove anything but a chosen insanity that keeps us doing only those things that we think make us look good. Who cares if we look good? Which, oddly enough, is yet the third definition of vanity as is considered inside those things some have in their bedrooms or bathrooms fitted with mirrors we use for mostly making sure we look great.

I’m just saying that it’s time for us to go deeper than all this superficial stuff that we’ve settled for all this time. Because God calls us into Christ and, well, I think it’s safe to say that there’s still to be always plenty of room for us to grow in His direction seeing as how we each have more than plenty in terms of doubt, desire, denial and distraction still to lose as we do.

The point is that vanity seeks for outward perfection while never once addressing the decay hidden just below the surface. But it’s Jesus who tells us to wash the inside of the cup first as that will take care of making the outside clean too.

Friends, faith is something impossibly deep, far too meaningful and entirely able to offer us plenty of room to grow, things to learn and thus more than enough to lose, lay down, leave behind.

That’s kind of the entire purpose of His choosing the tomb.

It’s that we’ve each a life to lose as it’s been one we’ve each lost to letting pride, ego and vanity lead the way into even such things as how we worship and why we think our way is good enough.

It isn’t.

Because our way is only vanity.

And yes, that does means that our way is worthless.

For He’s told us Himself that He’s not pleased with our shows, our performances, our sacrifices. He’s said He’s had enough of the blood of goats and rams. What He desires from us is hearts broken over what we’ve become that lead us unto a meekness that rejoices in our weakness as we truly learn to honestly trust that when we are weak is when He’s strongest.

So stop worshiping Him in your estimation of your own perfection and rather seek to honor Him with your humility as such is clear evidence of the Truth bearing fruit in what’s long been a soul unwilling to grow anything as it’s long thought itself already fully grown.

Trust me friends, we’re not.

We’re not even close.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold