Day 4002 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 John 4:6 NIV

But to listen

Contrary to current convention, the reality is that to listen demands an intention of attention be given unto whatever the hearer determines is worth more than just hearing. For there’s in truth a great and growing difference between the ability to hear and the act of listening. One is something all of us can do, to a given degree of course considering the existence of such varied abilities regarding hearing impairment and deafness being real realities for some. But even they desire not only to hear some things but to in fact listen sometimes.

And that’s because the other is a done by a brother, a sister, a mother who determines it’s worth their effort given unto the going deeper into appreciation for whatever another is saying.

A difference of direction, decision, determination, devotion even that defines the line that separates those who we can help because they will both hear but, once that willing, will in fact go that extra mile and actually pay attention to whatever it is that we’re saying because they love us enough, appreciate us enough to actually believe that what we take the time to say means enough to us that it should mean at least something to them as well.

But that’s become the general struggle of all baser communication amongst this collapsing culture of what’s anymore a decidedly confused creation.

It’s that very few even care that anyone else is around them, much less then anywhere near enough to actually hear them, and that’s, again, much less than being willing to listen. And yet, as we discussed yesterday, one of the foundational desires for anyone who’s determined the very direction in which they truly believe that such things as hope, joy, love, peace are to be found, they want only to tell whomever they can. Because, well, deep down we know that everyone around us is looking for the same kinds of things.

And, having been given hearts that are created to care, to love, to want for the very best for everyone we come across, we too then wish only to help whomever we might unto their finding too of this hope-filling life that we’ve ourselves happened upon here in this darkening night of depraved human delight in which so many are so happy to be so horrible that such longing for that sense of love and belonging are growing only deeper and yet more dire the same.

Because they’re already hard to find here in this place in which both love and hate often seem to exist in equal measure.

On a good day at least.

And indeed, many of us would probably agree that said good days don’t come around all that much anymore. Rather it seems that most days have only in store just more of the day before which was itself quite woefully lost unto the wayward wants and wicked wishes of what is a world that’s living as if everyone has both the greatest of intentions and yet strangely nothing’s getting any better.

At all.

Instead it seems that every single day is jam-packed with more evidence of not only the fall but our almost excitement to keep it going. And that’s because, unless you’re deaf, blind and living under ground, it’s pretty clear to see that all of society is succumbing to all of these lines of division and separation and disagreement and aggravation that are each drawn by some desire to perhaps be heard but mostly only an unwillingness to listen.

All because we’re all convinced that, again, we’re the only ones right about all these manmade matters that just don’t really matter but rather only make for more disasters as are daily designed in our doing, saying, thinking of things that only further the hatred that anymore seems to overwhelm love and mercy on an all but daily basis.

Indeed, we’re drowning in everything from deceit to despair down here.

And yet everyone seems to have the answer as to why, and yet that answer usually only has to do with blaming someone else for all the problem that we see that they’ve caused thanks to their lack of living our lives in all the self-perceived perfection which we always see inside them from where we stand. Which, as we kind of touched on yesterday, is only high upon these self-made towers of what are an over-confidence in our own powers of such things as piety and thus living proper.

Yes, each of us seem to think that we’re the ones who get everything right and thus that anyone else who says, does, thinks, beliefs anything any differently is nothing but wrong entirely, and that probably about everything as, well, it’s usually just easier to gather everything together so that we can just set it on fire all at once and not have to worry about it any longer.

And while that might work well for some brush that we’ve gathered up while tidying up after a storm or a long, cold winter, it doesn’t really do much that’s to prove all that helpful when it comes to setting fire to one another.

Not that we’re technically to that point of literally going that far, but friends the amount of hatred and division and general disappointment with life itself alive within this world these days, it’s inching us closer and closer.

Why?

Because anymore we don’t even care to acknowledge the existence of one another. I mean just taking a quick trip to the grocery store and you’ll easily find that most folks are living as if they’re truly blind to the very possibility of there being anyone else around them. We see it in traffic. We see it in stores. We see it on the streets. People just blast on past everyone they probably see as only in their way. Because we’re all in such a hurry to get wherever it is that we think we have to be that we apparently haven’t even the time to see that there are others still around us that even oddly enough look just like us.

Something we’re also starting to lose our ability to appreciate as is being proven in this growing degree of a general loss of humanity appreciating the very sanctity of life itself.

Because it’s something we don’t have time to care about. No, we’ve got so many things to do, places to be, plans to make, dreams to dream for more of the things that it truly does really seem we tend to care more about than the people we’re “ghosting” along our way to getting there and getting them. It’s all, as we’ve been talking, just about us anymore. This world is filled with so many separate existences that we’re all but to the point of basically exploding because we seem increasingly unable to even tolerate having anyone else around us.

They’re just in our way. They’re taking our place. They stealing our joy. They’re finding whatever it is for which we’ve been mining before we can get it and so we just get jealous which is itself nothing but a close cousin to killing. Because the lines are anymore so quickly blurring that we can barely keep up with why we’re supposed to hate someone. For every single day we’re sold all these lies about the horridness of those who are living different lives than we’ve chosen to live ours.

Which are, again, the only ones we tend to imagine as being perfect anyway.

And, well, since our lives are the only ones going right, and thus us the only ones doing right, it’s not that far of a drive to all but wishing unalive those who are pretty much wasting their time and taking our air and don’t really have much of a reason to be here anymore. After all, if you’re just going to be what we consider wrong, stupid, dumb, foolish, wicked, then yeah, the world might be better off without you.

Kind of like we seem to have assumed of Jesus himself.

Many here considered Him wrong for many of the things He did such as hanging around with tax collectors and other sinners. Many considered Him stupid and dumb for daring to say such things as how those who wish to keep their lives will only lose them whereas those who lay them down, let them go, they’ll be the few who find them. Most considered Him foolish as He hung upon that cross suffering having said that He could do something so amazing as destroy and rebuild the Temple in just three days times.

A punishment insisted upon by those who deemed Him wicked for the horrible doing of such things as healing the blind, helping the lame walk, giving parents and families back their recently deceased loved ones.

What a jerk, right?

See what can happen when we think we’re right?

May just end up doing, saying, thinking some things that are only proven not only entirely wrong but so horribly so that now our only hope is oddly enough doing as Jesus called us to and laying down these sin-filled lives and turning our ears away from those lies that soothed our incessant craving to continue thinking that everything we’d been doing was right and just and nothing short of completely commendable unto their finally listening to He who loves us so much that He laid down His life for us so as to remove from us said willingness to only hear whatever we liked the sound of.

That’s our problem as is written inside this whole idea of itching ears gathering around themselves only those who only say only that which they’re increasingly desperate to hear.

More so today than ever before!

Indeed, our culture has become consumed with this idea of affirmation. Because to affirm is basically to confirm that you agree that whatever it is that you hear, that you see is as right as someone else thinks it to be, wants it to be, needs it to be so that he or she needn’t endure the shattering process of doing anything any differently.

Ever.

Because we loathe the very suggestion of change so very much that we even killed the Lord of Love because He came to us and died for us so as to help us see the danger ahead should we keep on doing as we’re sadly still doing.

Which is nothing but patting ourselves on the back and gathering around us only those who are only willing to do only the same.

Such is what it means to affirm. It’s “a statement or sign that something is true”, “the act of saying yes or of showing that you mean yes”, a measure of “support or approval”. Of what? Anything. There is truly no limits to those things upon which we can look with approval, support, agreement, appeasement thus of those who do them, say them, think them, believe them.

Something we all do even if we don’t actually agree with them or wish to repeat them or say them or think them ourselves. It doesn’t matter anymore because apparently our society has chosen to decide that the very best thing we can any of us do in this life, with this life, to this life is merely agree to let one another die in sins so increasingly evident that you almost start to wonder if people are actually so gone as to enjoy doing so much so wrong that they’d honestly rather die than live a noble, honorable, upright and honest way of life.

Because it sure seems like that’s the case.

Because every single day all we seem to see is again a people separating so widely, so violently even that we’re at each other’s necks all the time. We are so consumed with so much hate that we can’t even tolerate hearing someone else talk. Because we seem to believe that we’ll just not agree with anything they have to say. May even happen to hear something that offends us.

And, move aside baseball and apple pie, being offended is the new national pastime.

We love acting as if we’ve been wronged, as if we’re victims of what’s a life so hard, so heavy, so miserable that it’s turned deadly and thus we’ve the right to fight back in what’s become an existence in which we exist only to either please ourselves or protect our pride in doing so.

And so we know that anyone who isn’t us likely sees things different from us and therefore brings unto us only the possibility of their not agreeing with everything we’re doing. But since we can’t be wrong, they can’t be right. And, well, if they’re not right then why waste our lives listening to anything they have to say? No, we don’t need any help so why let anyone else offer us any?

Even God himself?

No, that’s where we’ve ended up down here. It’s at this outcome of understanding in which, from where we’re standing, we are God. As mentioned in prior posts, I’ve literally seen “pastors” say exactly that. One dude literally said, and I quote, “I am God Almighty!”

Yep, he went there.

And what happened?

The crowd roared.

Why?

Because he said they were God too.

Which, back to that whole itching ears things in which folks gather around themselves only those who only say only whatever it is that they want to hear, well, that just so happens to be exactly what everyone wants to hear. That we’re gods, kings and queens, the only royal divinity in our lives. Why? Because that one lie will always prove willing to abide by all the others we so love to tell ourselves like how we’re always right, do nothing wrong, don’t misunderstand anything, have never made any mistakes, aren’t lost, aren’t confused, aren’t deluded or dying.

In short, we’ve long since become of such unbridled arrogance that all we seem to believe is that we’re nothing short of God himself and thus can do no wrong and will live forever.

And friends, should anyone else come along and tells us the same thing, we’ll happily listen.

Exact same problem that Paul tries to confront in 2 Corinthians 11:4. “For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.”

And indeed, still we put up with it easily enough because every single false gospel is nothing but a message made exclusively to please people. But therein lies the problem!

“If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

We’d rather be servants of the spirit of falsehood spoken of here. We’d be servants of the flesh, which is what Christ came to put to death. We’d thus be working in blatant opposition to His workings still ongoing. We would thus be, as the Bible tells us, living in enmity against God because our still seeking to make friends in, of, with this world that is still so wicked and wrong that most folks down here refuse to even pretend anyone else is still living around them because everyone that isn’t them is nothing but a chance to realize they’re more wrong than they ever imagined they could be.

And thus everyone around us is only our enemy as they exist as only what is the very evidence that can and will be used against us in the court of eternity when their life and how they lived it proves unequivocally that we could have, perhaps should have done something differently with ours.

Yes, we live as if everyone else is nothing but dangerous as they’ve likely chosen to live according to things, thoughts, theories that we haven’t. And inside every difference of opinion, direction, devotion, someone is right and everyone else is wrong.

But again, we can’t be those who are wrong.

Must be everyone else then.

And so, again, why then listen to them? Why even waste our time pretending we hear them? Why not just do as we’ve become accustomed to and just ignore them? We don’t need that risk of their doing, saying, being something that proves we’re mistaken. No, we don’t need that, and so we don’t welcome that. Rather we gather around ourselves only those who only say only whatever it is that we tell them up front we want to hear all so that we’re clear that it is going to remain our way or the highway.

Either say what we want to hear, agree with everything that we do, believe everything that we tell you we believe and think that you should too, or kick rocks. Get lost. Take your differences, your own life’s lessons, whatever it is that you care about and move on. We don’t need you here because we don’t anything or anyone who dares say in any way that maybe we’re not quite so right about everything.

Because we know we are.

And again, we’ve happened upon plenty of people who will come alongside and agree with our estimation.

Even to the point of having “pastors” tell us that we really are gods and can thus truly do no wrong.

Again, why listen to anything else then?

That’s life here. It’s a place in which every single one of us has this different idea in mind in regard to life, to love, to hope, to purpose, to peace. And yet we’re each so dead set in our beliefs that we just refuse to even acknowledge the existence of anyone who doesn’t share them. So we ignore them. We hate them. We despise them. At this point some of us are even to the point of “unaliving” them.

All because we’re all convinced we’re right and won’t listen to anything or anyone who dares say otherwise.

Which leaves us right where we are living whatever life we’ve chosen to live, which is right where we want to be: Just left alone to do as we please and never have to be bothered by anyone doing, saying, thinking or believing any differently.

But friends, what then of growth? What then of learning? What then of hope? Can we have hope if we already know everything about it? Is the goal of life itself our believing that we’d got it all figured out? Is Heaven truly as close as our becoming convinced that we’re right and everyone else is wrong?

Are we really God just because we can’t see ourselves as being anything else, anything less?

Well, that’s the message that will continue to sell around here. And, well, that’s why we’ll feel mostly ignored, refused, rejected, mocked, perhaps even persecuted. It’s because we’re not of this world and thus don’t walk in step with this world and thus won’t be found looking, sounding, seeming anywhere enough like this world to be liked enough by this world to be listened to by the world.

Instead they’ll mostly hate us because the message we have to share most certainly doesn’t do much to soothe itching ears. Instead it breaks hearts. It shatters souls. It confronts sins. It exposes shame. It stands against every fallen human way and demands we do something about the presence of them in our lives. Yes, this message demands that we die to the lost way of life that all of us have lived.

Easy to see why those who think they’re living their best wouldn’t want much to do with us.

So be it.

Yep, said it.

So be it.

Because we’re not here to convince people to believe in Jesus. We’re rather just here to be ready in season and out to give anyone who asks the reason for this hope in Him that we have.

They might listen. They might truly want to know. They may walk away and ask Him into their lives.

Most won’t.

And yeah, that’s a huge part of what makes this so hard. It’s that we do have this amazing hope in His promise of eternal life filled with so much love and joy and peace that we need all of forever to feel His fullness of all the above. And it’s crushing to realize so many just aren’t interested in it.

That’s for Him to sort out.

We’re here only to follow Christ and tell others why as is done inside everything we both say and do.

Some will listen, many will not.

Because, while all of us are from God, most here have forgot and care not to remember.

So don’t be surprised when most people only ever choose to continue to just ignore you. For all that proves is that you don’t belong here. And while that might be hard to deal with as it means most of those around you will stop hearing you, it’s the ones who will listen that we can help.

For while being heard may feel great, it’s being listened to when you have something special to say that makes all the difference.

In this life and the next.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold