Day 4056 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 8:7 NIV

Hostility’s impossibility

There’s this inner drive that’s alive in life in which we find this fear of failing to be found as those pleased and impressed by what is this idea that we ourselves are impressive enough to deserve such pleasure ourselves. It’s indeed what drives nearly all that we all do in life. Granted, it’s one of the single greatest lies ever told. But still, it seems to matter not as rather the lie holds as life goes the same way it’s now gone for all time, just somehow in a decidedly scarier degree.

Because the lie remains alive and yet nowadays it seems to drive not only us to our limits in search of any and all vanities but also the entirety of humanity closer and closer to the edge of insanity.

And I think this is proven inside such a delusion that has inspired us to define insanity as the doing of the same thing over and over again whilst expecting different results every time we try. And indeed, this is an insane way to spend a life, doing always nothing new but expecting always something different. But what if this idea by which we’ve defined what it is to be insane is something itself of a distraction from the personal insanities into which we’ve allowed our lives to descend daily?

For could there be a more insane undertaking than that taken by all of man all throughout time only to find the same outcome waiting at the finish line of this life?

What have all men found as they left this ground? Well, the sad truth is that we who are here still haven’t any real way of knowing that doesn’t demand at least some semblance of the humility seen inside the reality that belief is a need if ever we’re to be anything of all we’re not. For without belief we’re bound to be only whatever it is that we’ve already become because belief is the willingness to look beyond the seen trying to see what more there is to find.

And so when it comes to this idea of a life’s finish line we who’ve yet to reach it must allow for at least a little bit of uncertainty in terms of what we’ll find once we do. But the problem with that will eventually prove that once we have we’ll have then no time left with which or in which to do anything that would alter the outcome. This too is seemingly proof of the necessity of belief being had before we haven’t the chance to have it. And, well, it’s also something of an indictment against time itself as it’s one thing that we’ve all had plenty of but have yet less today than ever before.

Leaving then what is a life of growing uncertainty, at least in regard to the finish line of life itself.

And it seems then that this strange blend of the peculiar certainty of belief as is held inside what we can’t see, don’t know, haven’t heard and thus have no idea as to the true existence thereof is then blended with the equally odd uncertainty of all that we can see, do know, have heard and thus retain at least some theoretical idea as to the seemingly proven existence thereof.

It’s truly what feels yet another table turned upside down as that which we know becomes only what we know we’ll have known as it’s inevitably replaced, and that already every single day if we so allow to so agree to His doing in us a new thing, by what we as of now don’t know but believe we will.

But this exchanging of all we’ve known for the more we’ve not now the ability to know seems to have caused this rather extreme loss of what is this still presently seen audacity found across all of humanity in which we all live still as if we know everything whilst sitting alone reminds us of the little we understand.

And this right here is where the fear sets in.

It’s that place in which we finally find that we’ve only found a great deal of certainty in regard to only all that is but temporary. Now the struggle seems to come in that we’ve long estimated the temporary to be anything but, and too the eternal to be something of a theory at best and that then best worried about as we get there to wherever, whatever, whenever it might be.

But you see, that none here know the day nor the hour of neither when Christ will return, whether we’ll have personally already left by then, whomever might beat us out of here and what all they’ll see when they do, it all only adds to this general confusion in regard to what to do with whatever that then makes this life.

Which, if we were to be honest we’d have to say we already had little idea thanks to our having tried many of them that we have had only to find that it all only went bad. But thankfully such honesty remains lost upon our lost society. And that fact itself seems to help the rest of us continue to rest inside what then are lives that we can still convince ourselves fairly easily are going pretty well.

All because we again can’t see what’s coming upon our arriving at the finish line of this life and too are still surrounded by a great and seemingly still growing many who themselves are living daily as if either that day of our leaving isn’t coming or there’s really nowhere that we’re going if and when it does.

Indeed, one of the favorite lies bought by humanity is that nothing happens to us when we die. And we all so love this lie because it allows us to live our lives as if nothing then matters all that much. For after all, if we truly needn’t worry about the distance between here and forever nor then that determined between the Heaven and hell which defines where our every forever will be found, then no, nothing we do while we’re here really needs to have all that much reason as there’s apparently no real recourse.

That’s not to say that we’ve not our own share of legalities and the illegalities that they seek to limit. But let’s be honest, all laws can only accomplish whatever it is that they’re attempting to should there be someone there to ensure both that they’re enforced and that with the understanding of there being punishment coming should they be infracted.

And, well, I think we’ve all seen plenty of times in which the laws of this land were proven to be decidedly more lenient than they perhaps should have been, such as when someone who’s a career criminal is released back to their career for the 15th time in 3 years.

Yeah, we’re clearly not too big on punishment around here!

Which is basically the point that I’m trying to get to, but yet only what feels such a small part of it that I fear I’ll fail to fully find it within this post.

It’s that we’ve become so normally numb to the cause and effect of law and order that we’re too now rather unworried as to the judgment of eternity as will be met by all but is still denied by most. And those most still deny that coming day because they’re stuck inside this way in which they live what is this life in which they find that they feel absolutely no fear whenever they hear this truth that’s instead commonly considered a rumor in regard to this God that has both expectations but also mercy when we fail them.

Which is itself something considered quite strange in what is a place where holding grudges and thus refusing forgiveness gives us still this feeling of some kind of personal superiority, but only because we can’t see that forgiveness isn’t meant to free the one being forgiven of their guilt but rather our freeing of us from having to keep alive the memories of what they did that we had to forgive them for having done.

Indeed, forgiveness is freedom for us, which might explain why so many are still so angry.

Anyway.

Hopefully you’re starting to see at least some of our many confusions found here inside this delusion that has us all but entirely determined to continue doing only as we see fit in what we seem to still see as a life that’s meant to fit only where it already is and that as whatever it happens to have already become.

But friends, that’s the question that’s now existed in the undercurrent of the latest string of these posts:

What is it that this life’s become?

Because looking around it only seems to be rather rife with every form of insanity known to man, known of man, known in men. And that because, well, we all continue to live as if we’re not insane or depraved or filled with disdain in regard to all the things that haven’t gone our way in what still seem to be our lives. Which is the lie that allows for all the others we buy to become what seem to us the smart purchases we’d really like for them to be.

It’s that these lives are ours. That they’re meant to only become the very sum of all we want for them to be. That we’re here to do nothing beyond ensuring again that we’re pleased and impressed, and that mostly only with this widespread theory that has all of society still seemingly believing only that we each alone are supposed to know what’s best for us despite a past in which we too tried just that only for, again, most it to only go bad.

Thus proving that we are in fact insane as we do indeed continue to do mostly only the very same things that we’ve all already done, or watched another do, unto what is this grand outcome of what today remains a world wholly unchanged from what then seems to be a rather firm decision to remain unholy.

For there is truly no separation to be seen inside this world and that between what we’ve been and what different we hope to be.

Rather we all just keep doing the same things men have always done thinking that we’ll somehow manage to be the ones to make it work out despite the common fallout found by all the others who’ve tried. But they only failed because they weren’t us and we’re better than them and so we’re definitely going to find a much better outcome.

Will we?

I guess time will tell. But then again, time itself is running away as we’ve today one less yesterday that we’re still to have come tomorrow.

Because we’ve one less tomorrow too.

But no need to worry about that since, again, apparently nothing happens when we die.

So yay, back to living our life doing whatever this is that we’ve decided to do with it. Which again brings me back to that ongoing question:

What has life become, as defined then by whatever this is that we’re doing with it, in it, to it?

Well, to save us some of the little time we’ve left as we could spend the rest of our lives trying to plumb the depths of our dumb, a shortcut taken for both then time and attention’s sake, I’ll just cut to the chase and say that what we’re doing is living in enmity against God in what’s then become a life that we’ve all either lived or are living still as what then are to be defined as His enemies.

See the simplicity?

Enmity, enemy.

He really does keep it impressively simple.

But then again that too seems only to be yet another confusion that we can’t allow ourselves to understand as we’re still here stood inside our every chosen delusion that have collectively combined to define this presence of enmity in our lives as are lived our way and not His. For His ways are higher than ours, which itself adds to the glaring difficulty we’re bound to have in trying to believe the things that He has to say as that’s not a good place to start thanks to our pride having long had us convinced that we ourselves are as good as it gets.

And that again despite all the disasters we’ve desired inside a life we’ve designed to have gone far better than it ever has.

Wasn’t our fault though.

Not sure whose it was but we’re sure it wasn’t ours.

Again, seeing the point yet?

It’s that all of life has become this mental marathon in which we continue to run away from truth, from reality, from reason and even responsibility simply because all of these things ask of us a humility that is an impossibility whenever one’s found inside a hostility.

After all, how can anyone win a war whenever they agree to just give up?

And, well, that, to us, is what humility sure seems to be. It’s our giving up. It’s our laying down. It’s our accepting of defeat as is demanded any time we agree to do anything other than whatever it was that we really wanted to. And as a people so prideful as we’ve both always been but somehow even more so become, humility then is seen as only humiliating as it defines this dire defeat of what was a life that we’d sought to live in a way that isn’t the way we’ve now consigned it to go.

For here in this world doing such things as seeking forgiveness isn’t something we know how to do because we apparently don’t know how to do wrong. Asking for help is nothing we understand because we can’t comprehend such an indecent reliance upon the strength, ability, intellect, experience or understanding of another. Following another is nothing we ever want to do as we need to be the leaders as we alone know how to find the very best outcomes in life.

Because, again, these are our lives and we’re the ones who’ve felt all the pleasure and satisfaction that we have and thus we know how best to find/feel it all again.

Thus doing the same things over and over again whilst always expecting it to go better and better.

Just like how all of us continue to refuse the growth of the fear of God in our lives. Something that all of mankind has done for, well, all of time! Indeed, the first us chose to reject God’s command to refrain from the fruit of that tree which, having instead chosen the partaking of, opened their eyes to the knowledge of good and evil, a knowledge which their offspring, who are all of us, thus would come to know too.

And indeed, we do!

Problem is that we do nothing about it as rather we continue to do as God asks us not to in what are then lives that are defined as living in enmity as His enemies as only enemies seek to so defy they who are seen as the opposing party. Add on top of that that we’ve all come to see life as a party in which the overall goal is to feel good all the time, and, well, His call to deny ourselves and take up our crosses and live as if this life is meant to lose, and you can see even more reasons as to why we’re so continually disinterested in His ideas.

Not that we don’t like some of them as such things as peace and joy and love and forgiveness and even the promise of life forever do sound pretty awesome!

But alas, they all ask of us the loss of our lives as have been lived as if we knew what to do with them, as is apparently proven best in how we feel and what we ourselves think is good.

Again leaving Him to be seen as our opposition.

Because He has far different definitions of everything from good to reason and life and love and mercy and compassion and how we’re the ones who need them and He’s more than willing to give them but we’d have to at first stop living as if He doesn’t in order for our to seek them from Him who we then do agree is there which is a fear because we have failed and that more times than we can count because most of them we did back when we didn’t want to know any better.

Not that we didn’t because we’re all again the offspring of Eve and Adam.

It’s just that we didn’t want to do the good we knew to do, which, is what the Bible defines as sin.

Something it also says earns the wage of death.

Meaning then that we’re all rich but only in our own demise.

And yet we live as if we know best what to do with life.

See the problem yet?

It’s that we’ve settled for an approach to life in which all we’ve managed to find is that death is now guaranteed. And that because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Thankfully the Son of the same came to this place to pay our debt by His enduring sin’s wage on our behalf. But alas it’s the very same Son who asks that we too take up our crosses and follow Him, giving away all we have and embracing a life in which we seek here not even a place to lay our head as we rather allow our eyes no rest from His request to stay fully alert and always sober, staring at the skies waiting for the clouds to part and our reward to start.

No, rather most still seek their reward here in what is then a place in which He’s said they’ll indeed have found it.

In a life lived in enmity against Him.

All because we’ve all become so ingrained with hatred for Him that we continue to deny Him, refuse Him, even going so far as to accuse Him of making our lives hard or miserable or empty or whatever else it is that they’ve become. All because what they’ve become surely isn’t our fault as our ideas were for their best. Never then seeing that it was our choices, our actions, our ideas that left them to becoming whatever they are since our actions have always been the result of our choices that were chosen thanks to our ideas.

Yes, we’re the ones who’ve always readily told everyone who could hear us that these were our lives and that we knew what we’re doing as we did it.

How then can anyone else be to blame for whatever it is that we’ve become?

This is the battle within as is fought between His ideal and our many ideas that somehow keep getting in the way of it. Friends, we’re living a lie that we tell ourselves! Because nothing that life has become is what He intended for life to be. Rather life has only become a common undertaking undertaken in enmity against Him simply because He asks us to stop being stupid and to quit chasing after death, heaping up the same as we go.

All because He asks us to deny ourselves the ideas that He knows will only cause us to destroy ourselves, a reality we’ve all already known inside our having all felt shame, guilt, regret, sadness, sorrow, worry, fear, humiliation, embarrassment, harassment, hardship and hatred.

All of which are also outcomes of war which is always fought in hostility which is itself a clear indication of enmity.

Indeed, we’ve brought all this on ourselves because we simply refuse to submit to Him because still we think that we can fix what we still can’t see we’ve broken.

Friends, how can that ever work?

At some point we have to quit while we’re behind and simply accept the defeat that we deserve in what are lives that we’ve destroyed. Unfortunately that point will come too late for most.

Because all most will ever know is to hate God simply because He loves us more than we’ve ever loved ourselves. And we simply can’t wrap our minds around that as it is understood only through humility.

And humility is hostility’s impossibility.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold