Day 4006 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hosea 4:7 NIV

The moral authority

Such is what a priest should be, what a leader should have, what a people should want in whatever, whomever they determine to follow, to look to, to lean on to lead them toward whatever, wherever it is that they happen to hope to find hope waiting to be whatever it is that hope might come to become. But the problem’s become that neither have the leaders any morals but nor do the people even expect them to for morality is too something everyone else has chosen to lose due to its perceived limitations in regard to laziness, lasciviousness and other general loserdom.

And in fact I personally feel no guilt in saying that we have become a people at least plausibly considered easily to be losers.

For losers lose, and, well, looking around you just can’t help but tell that we’ve not only lost a lot but we’re daily losing more in what is this swim not for shore but rather into our remaining assured that whatever we’re doing is right to be done simply because we both want it to be and can find readily a great number of those willing to agree. That is indeed what has become of basically all of society. It’s this endless hunt for someone to come affirming our ignorance of our infirmities.

Infirm meaning exactly what it seems to mean. Un firm. Without firmness. Without strength. Without resolve or respect or responsibility. We are a people without thanks to our having chosen for so long to go without any endurance of sound teaching, of godly rebuke, of honesty honestly being our upmost pursuit and holiness our sole priority. I think that even were we to literally all gather together in a room, we’d not collectively be able to remember the last time any of those things mattered.

Let alone enough to actually inspire in us a willingness, no, an urgency to chase them down.

Because instead we’ve each been chasing after this idea that has us cast as the moral authority in this show. We’ve long wanted ourselves to be the only ones who know, who understand, who get it figured out and can just coast out of this world riding high on laurels resting on our behalf. That’s become our best hope in life itself! To rest. To endure ease. To suffer tranquility.

To become so bored in our every belief that all we can see is nothing but ourselves.

Because if we could reach this theoretical ideal in which we alone are the moral authority, the fullness of all human understanding, the very epitome of all potential, then we could truly be justified in our doing what we’ve been doing, finally without that worry that we might not be right in doing it.

That is the thorn that still exists in every single side. Granted, it’s one we’ve lathered in so many lies and so much lust that we barely feel the sting anymore. Indeed, we’ve become a people numb to the gravity of life as a whole as we exist inside this hole that is our soul, or at least the place where it used to be back before we sold it to the sea of those endlessly willing to lie to us all the time.

For in truth, at one time we had in mind this masterpiece painstakingly painted of such miracles as mercy and modesty. We had at least a baser awareness of belief, of better, of our believing so much in something so much better that we’d never so stop along the way as we have in our thinking we’re now on our way back. That’s the real tragedy which continues to befall humanity. It’s not only the lack of growth toward every hope but the very fact that we seem to assume that we’ve each done been to our best and just now coming back only to lead the rest to where our best remains.

How else could you explain the general lay of things?

I mean all of life has become something of a stagnancy in which we each seem to believe that we’re to be justified in our having become this lazy here upon towers of pretend powers as proven in nothing more than the social media delusion that’s only driven us closer to the edge of pure insanity.

Every single day we awake to do nothing more than bless the world with our thoughts and theories. We pour endless hours into showing off our powers as proven in strength, in beauty, in our ability to be the best source of how to achieve both the above and all their like. Our lives have found us losing our minds trying to find some new shortcut to take, some new secret to share, someone, anyone who just might happen to care about whatever it is that we care about so that we can tell them all about how to find it, feel it, do it, achieve it.

We are a people seeking for endless achievement, wishing always for so much wealth and winning that we’re wanting now for only technology to take over and give us a hand in helping ourselves higher unto these lies which lie at levels of haughtiness toward which no human should go near as much as we have.

A haughtiness from which there may truly be no turning back.

Why?

Because, as we’ve been talking, how much longer can we reasonably expect that God will be okay with taking the backseat? How much longer do we really think He will prove willing to watch us rebel against everything from His Word to His will? How much longer do we think He’s going to give us to letting us lose us here inside this horror show that is a society that seems only to know to look unto itself for whatever rarified help that it barely has the audacity to admit it might need?

How much longer can we honestly go on thinking we needn’t any help when, well, the world’s going to hell and all we seem able, willing, interested in doing is just standing on the streets holding signs and yelling all about how it’s all somebody else’s fault?

Because surely it can’t be ours.

Because we’re the ones always right, right? We’re the ones who get nothing wrong, make no mistakes. Rather we’re those who are the moral authority. We are the ones who know and understand everything. We’re the priests. We’re the prophets. We’re the kings, not the paupers. No. We are indeed the very fulfillment of Revelation 3:17!

For daily we all gather together to each day awake to again proclaim that “I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.” Only to prove endlessly the ending of that verse in which it seems that no, we “do not realize that (we) are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”

Because to realize those things would all but instantly undermine this sense of authority we’ve assumed having usurped God’s glory inside what’s long been a life falling increasingly short thereof.

Indeed, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Problem is that we’re treating that as if the goal in what has grown to be considered a competition of sorts in which we daily compete to see who can fall the furthest the fastest. And what this has become for us is a culture of such confusion that each of us have succumbed unto our serving this idol, this delusion of our every personal ideal as is anymore spoken only ideology and indoctrination.

Yes, such deceptions are the gods of these nations that we take such pride in, fight so fervently for, want so badly to belong to that we seek to believe in nothing else, want for nothing more.

We’ve all just chosen so fully to make the best of whatever this is that we can’t seem to see any dare to believe in their being anything better anymore. But granted, I suppose it will eventually become quite hard to believe in better whenever a person has become all but convinced that they’re the best already. And indeed, this seems to be the very opening to our every story being told anymore. It’s all become about why you should listen to me. Why you shouldn’t listen to them. Why so-and-so is wrong, bad, dangerous and how those who told you so are so much better.

But still asks the question, “What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul?” 1 Corinthians 3:5

“What I mean is this: One of you says, ‘I follow Paul’; another, ‘I follow Apollos’; another, ‘I follow Cephas’; still another, ‘I follow Christ.’ Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul?” 1 Corinthians 1:12-13

We are literally still repeating history here inside our widespread estimation that we’re so incredibly progressed so far past it that it couldn’t possibly repeat. But friends, it’s all this technology that we have to thank for things like this going so much worse than ever before. Back then the people had what, 8, 10 different people to claim they followed?

Hop on your favorite social media channel and you’ll see that nearly every aspect of life is now measured in followers and those following.

And yet we lean on these things so heavily that we likely couldn’t even narrow it down to a single Paul, a lone Cephas, one Apollos that we claim to follow, to learn from, to lean on. Rather we’re following hundreds if not thousands of different people and varied accounts, each then being given access to influence our thoughts, define our doubts, demand our devotion and construct this commotion that all of life has so fully become that we don’t know how to believe in anything else.

Because it’s been this way for so long now that there may truly be no coming back.

We’ve each been handed these little devices that offer us platforms that can so quickly reach this place in which everyone is famous, everything’s going viral, our every word and want and win is winning us again and again a mass of the masses turning on and tuning in just to see what else we have to say or show. And, being a people who fear both loneliness and failure, our finding so many friends and followers so quickly, so easily, well, it easily arrives us at this place in mind, in heart, in life in which we come to believe that we are something special.

And being a people who’ve long believed the same, it takes nothing then for us to welcome the fame, the fortune, the following, that feeling of having so many friends and such warm fellowship through screens and feeds that we feed upon the daily dose of our having found that hope of our finally feeling as important as we’ve long thought ourselves to be.

All the way until we reach this point in which our noses are so out of joint that we can barely breathe anymore.

Indeed, there seems few able or willing to see is that there comes a time in which we become so blind to how lowly, how meager, how mundane and insane and untrained we’ve both been and become that we choose rather to become numb to the dumb and thus remain the same.

A choice validated by those many who show up daily to hear if not hang on our every word.

We live in a world in which we can become rock stars overnight. We can share some posts and find fulfilled those hopes of having a bunch of people agree with us. We can post some funny words and become professional comedians who never need dare the stage we’d be elsewise afraid to stand on. We can pen some sermon and share it for all the world to see only to eventually come to believe that we ourselves are pastors, preachers, leaders.

And indeed, in a way we’re all called to be.

Problem is that our every service ought to be surrendered unto Christ alone.

But that’s never been the way to win the world.

No, in this world if you want to win, well, you better let go of Him. Because this place still hates His truth. This world still rejects His Word. This world still refuses His redemption!

Why?

Because we’ve all bought the lie that we don’t need it.

Because we’re all perfect.

Because we have so many people in our ears telling us how awesome we are, how great we sing, how pretty we look, how funny our jokes seem to be that eventually we just succumb to believing what we always wanted to anyway. And that is that we are awesome. We are cool. We are impressive, interesting, important. We’ve all wanted all of those things to be true for as long as we can remember. I mean from the moment we hop on the bus to school there’s this pressure to fit in, to feel like you belong, to prove then that you’re important or impressive so that those you’re trying to fit in amongst will grant you welcome.

We want to be welcomed by the world we’re in. We want to be successful in this world we’re in. We want to be loved by this world we’re in because it makes no sense to be hated, to be rejected, to be lonely.

And so we always seek for the ways to accomplish our being welcomed, wanted, worthy of their warmth and well regard.

And well, what better way to impress the world than to please the world?

That’s long been the most obvious path of least resistance unto the very substance of all the things that we still assume matter far more than they ever really did. Because the truth is that we never needed anyone else to like us. We never needed anyone else to accept us. We never needed to bend over so backwards seeking to achieve for ourselves a life worth living. And we definitely didn’t need to do all we’ve done trying to accomplish any of all the above.

Because this world was never our home and these lives never our own.

We just couldn’t let that be the case in this place in which it’s considered a waste of life to not live that lie that binds the mind to thinking only that we’re all that matters or means anything.

Not that we’d ever put it that way. But friends, can we honestly say that isn’t the way we’ve all learned to seek to live? As if we’re special? As if we’re successful? As if it stressful to face hate or fear rejection?

Is this not why so many still contend Christ foolish?

Because He was hated, is hated. He is rejected. His Way, His Words, His wants even are all things widely considered stupid!

Because in this world the best thing we can be is loved, accepted, applauded and lauded as being those worthy of laurels and legions of followers hanging on our every word and always looking unto us for their very thoughts. Because that’s what life’s become! We’ve all so outsourced everything from our thinking of thoughts to living of life that I dare say we can’t do much of either on our own anymore.

Can you imagine the horror that could happen were you to accidentally leave your phone at home?

I’d wager there are even some who couldn’t find their way back home if not for the gps on their phone.

We’re done.

We’ve lost.

We’re so torn, tossed, turned around and upside down that all of us continue to think that we alone are all there is. That we’re the best to lead. That we’re the ones upon whom everyone else should lean. That we should be the only source of moral, intellectual, spiritual ability, authority ever to be seen or sought. After all, that’s the lie that we’ve bought. That we’re good. That we know. That we have everything understood and under control.

We love ourselves!

And well, we then don’t see any reason as to why everyone else shouldn’t.

Just look at all they’d be missing!

All the plans we’re planning and paths we’re paving and problems we’re definitely not making. No, we are the ones who have so well done our doing so well that we have swelled into this assumption that we are each nothing short of God’s answer to every human question.

But, just as this verse mentions, more of those who think themselves better doesn’t necessarily achieve a better outcome.

Rather, and as we can literally see unfolding every single day, the more we all come to believe that we ourselves are the very best amongst the rest, there can be no rest. There can be no peace. There can come no more calm when we hold in our palm these little windows that show us the world as we want to see it thanks to algorithms existing to ensure that we see only an endless stream of all the things that we ourselves teach it we want to see, need to hear, love to believe we already know.

We’ve indeed traded in our glorious God for this way of life spent chasing after our own glory and our being the only ones glorified.

And yet the further we get away from Him, wouldn’t you know it, but things aren’t getting much better are they? Seems quite the odd happening considering how amazing we all are!

Almost seems to say that we’re not any of us all that amazing after all.

But again, we’d never really put it that way either.

No, we’re too far gone to see how far gone we are. This world’s gotten so turned around trying to follow itself that it’s literally filled with those who seem to legitimately believe so fully that dark is light and wrong is right that wrong is what’s done far more often than not by far more than may ever again be able to see just how wrong we all have the tendency to be.

We can’t see such things anymore. Because we’ve long since become convinced that we’re the ones who have all the answers, know all the outcomes, can promise the best of both unto whoever proves their fealty, their friendship, their willingness to trust in us.

Because we think we’re wise in our trusting ourselves.

Or at least that’s the idea that sells.

And as that lie continues to prove the one most here will happily continue to buy, well, things will indeed continue going from bad to worse in what is a world packed with those deceived and being deceived. Because there is no hope in trusting ourselves nor anyone else who looks like us. Bible explicitly tells us to place no trust in mere humans who’ve each but breath in their lungs, deceit in their hearts, lies in mind and souls so lost that they think they’ve found something worth finding down here.

There is nothing worth finding here.

Least of all that common estimation that we’re really something special.

Friends, the only thing that once made us special is that we were at first made in the very image and glory of God. And, seeing as how that’s something we’ve all so clearly forgot, the only thing that makes us special now is that the Son of the same God came to save us from what we’d become having forgotten who we were at first created to be.

Salvation makes us special because Jesus proved His love for us in that while we were still sinners, He took up that cross and paid for those lived being lived so lost.

We are by no means the moral authority, the righteous repository, the definition of discipline, dedication or divinity. We are but a fallen humanity in increasingly desperate need of mercy.

Thankfully He offers exactly that. But nothing can be offered unto anyone who think they need nothing.

And, well, nothing is ever to be seen as being needed by those who think they’re already enough as it is and on their own.

Again my friends, be careful what you ask for. Because we both just might get it and then asked by another why we wanted it so much more than whatever we gave away to get it.

Even these thrones we continue to contend we’re each setting on.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold