Day 4080 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 73:4 NIV

What is struggle?

Is it something disclosed in discomfort? Is it disease undisguised? Is it the lack of health known to us as having wealth and knowing nothing but happiness? Is it misery made in more moments than those in which we meet it not? Is it not having the ability, the opportunity, the affluence to afford something we want, something that someone else could afford and many have bought? Is it pain proven in mental delusion designed inside all manner of inner distress never seen, or so we try, upon the surface? Is it seen inside a lack of success in regard to whatever it is that success is to us?

What is success?

That’s what we spent yesterday trying to discuss. And indeed, it seems that in many ways, if not most, struggle forces us to go in that direction that success doesn’t know. For it feels as if struggle is something seen by eyes that haven’t the life that’s therefore free from the misery that it seems that all struggle means. And sure, to struggle is a bundle not of happiness but rather of hardship, emptiness and suffering as from inside it we see all the things, places, people that it just seems we can never manage to be.

Things, places and people we always retain this ability to believe are ever better than whatever, wherever, whoever it is that we are.

Are they?

You see, that’s something that I fear we’ve sort of fallen our way toward in what is this world in which that which was created for continuing relationships and keeping in touch with kin has become something rather akin to sin in which we let every single day win this battle that is our belief as anymore it seems that all these screens ever really seem to show is all the better ways in which our lives never go. We’ve settled for a life of endless comparison, always worried over whatever it is that another has or is that we aren’t or don’t.

And it’s killing us.

And not even slow.

No, rather it feels anymore as if the entire world is lonely, isolated inside themselves seeking for some sort of message that sells to the millions who we love to imagine are out there somewhere comparing themselves to us and finding themselves to be those lacking somehow. And that’s because all this social connection has forced us into self-isolation seeking always to better our lives through what are the eyes of those not living them. And yet it’s those same strangers and fools to whom we grovel seeking some novel attention that dissolves our fear for a moment.

Fear of what?

Failing. Falling apart. Being forgotten. Being broke. Being alone. Being wrong. Being gone from what is the only life we’ve ever dared to never consider twice as rather we’re convinced that to slow down inside this hustle culture is something akin to cancer that we give ourselves as it would surely bring about so many ills that we may in fact never recover from it.

Because here success is always seen inside just about everyone else. Every single day we open wide the door to our hearts and only seem to hear how great another has it, how wonderful their lives are and how amazing they must then be at living them. Indeed, we’re daily swimming in this sea of scenes showing those glowing with success in what sure seem to be lives so free from the struggles we know that they must know them not.

Is that possible though?

For a life here to be lived here without hardship? To never know anything of fear, worry, doubt? To find somehow, somewhere down here so much glory and fame and the fantasy life that both seem to provide that life from then on never feels anything of failure or fear?

Or is that just the story we continue to hear from those who’ve made a career out of making sure the lighting is just right so that the filter doesn’t have to work quite so hard to make their post seem so perfect to those who look at those of surpassing influence seeking to see whatever it is that they need to do in order to one day finally be the same as they who lie for a living?

See, this is one of the things, of the many, that I hate about this version of life we’re losing to sheer insanity. It’s that anymore everything’s fake. And in truth, I think it has been for a while now. And that’s because we’ve accepted this approach to living a life in which all we ever do with it is doom-scroll through all these highlight reels of lives we’re not fortunate enough, famous enough, wealthy enough, healthy enough, pretty enough, strong enough, brave enough, bold enough to have the opportunity to be living ourselves.

No, our life doesn’t sell.

Because, well, nobody wants to see the struggles we do. Nobody wants to scroll through some basically endless loop of what’s long been a seemingly endless life in which not all that much ever seems to go quite right. No, this world runs on success, on accomplishment, on the influence and affluence thereof. Why? Because arrogance is the easiest of all lies to buy because we want nothing more than to reach that place in life, that point in time, that peace of mind in which we find that everyone else is finally looking unto us because we’ve finally managed to become the ones that know nothing of struggle.

Is that possible?

Granted, it sure seems to be considering all these incredible lives we continue to see inside that sea of selfishness and vanity flowing from our phones flooding our fear of inadequacy with plenty of evidence that sure seems to solidify it. Yeah, this is why it’s called doom scrolling. It’s both because it’s senseless yes and endless sure but also because it takes us through all these rolls of camera-captured proof of someone else living a life so absolutely amazing that daily they can afford to lose all that we’d love more than anything to finally have.

In fact, I think that’s why our every life anymore always seems so bad.

It’s because we spend upwards of 8, 9, 10 hours a day gazing into the obvious abyss that is this apparent perfection of those living lives filled with so much fame, fortune and freedom that we just figure they know nothing of worry or hardship. A lie itself solidified in that, well, if they do they never show it! No, rather so many here look so endlessly perfect that in all of our trying to learn how to too, according to recent statistics, we americans check our phones an average of 186 times a day, and teens receive nearly 250 notifications from apps on their phone the same.

Both of which have led to a proven explosion of such things as sadness, loneliness, depression and even the bitter endpoint of such miseries, suicide.

Again, it’s killing us and not even slowly anymore.

Because we’ve become so interconnected with the world as a whole that we’re now just seconds away from grabbing our phones for the 185th time to see why it chimed and realize that it was because our favorite influencer just posted a new clue as to what we too should do to make sure we’re doing everything we can to become like them.

Which is our goal, proven in that 57% of Gen Z want only to become influencers themselves.

Why?

Because fame, as it always has, it still sells. It still thrills. It still achieves this inherent dream we have of our living a life so far from bad that millions of fans tune in every time we find some new crumb to offer them, and hopefully pay for the subscription plan that we hide behind passwords sold in monthly installments that grant them access to all the behind the scenes secrets that are so much better than those we kindly offer for free to those who seem to see something in us that they want to be themselves.

Again, it’s all just comparison.

And yet somehow it’s always us comparing ourselves to everyone else.

And that from what’s honestly a way of life that’s often pretty far from perfect.

And that because, well, sometimes we are afraid. Sometimes we do mess up. Every now and then we don’t get anywhere even close to measuring up to even the expectations that we anymore only sort of half-heartedly set for ourselves. And that’s because we’re tired of failing to be the better people we’re rapidly losing our ability to believe we can be.

And that because according to all we can see, better just continues to drift further and further away behind highlight lives that we can’t find because we just can’t afford to subscribe to the super secrets to success that those who seem so perfect feel the need to charge us to learn.

It’s all a game anymore. And yet it’s one played in both pain and profit, the latter seeming to matter so much because the former finds for everyone a ready reason to do whatever they have to, and spend however much it takes, to finally just catch a break.

Why?

Because down here life sucks sometimes.

Because the truth of this fallen reality is that it’s not meant to be easy. We’re not supposed to be successful here, at least not in the way that society’s made it seem. Rather we’re, as Christ Himself has told us plain, we’re going to have trouble in this place. We will face hardship. We will feel pain. We will lose friends, even our own family will turn their backs on us one day maybe.

And yet we’ve become so terrified of this outcome that we’ve become these little soldiers adamant to prove that we can rise above it. That we can become so rich and famous and powerful and important that our lives themselves will become so perfect that we, once there, never again need to fear such worries as failure and famine and being forgotten.

Indeed, we’ve even all these ai lies that are offering folks the opportunity to go on singing songs and acting in movies even after they’re dead.

Because we’ve become a people who just refuse to let go of this ideal of some perfect life that needs us to be here.

In what is oddly enough the one place in which we’ll struggle the most.

Or at least I hope.

Because you see, that’s the point of this life. It’s to help us find hope. To inspire us to look for better wherever better really is. To go through so much that’s so bad, so hard, so miserable and heavy that we finally just break apart and accept His offering us a new start aimed toward that place in which better has always been the promise.

For the promise was never that this life would always go just right.

It’s rather that life will go so wrong and become so hard and sometimes feel so scary and painful that we’ll finally be able to imagine the outermost reaches of Heaven as we sit inside a sort of suffering, struggling that leaves us with nothing but hope in something better.

And that because better eventually becomes anything other than everything we’ve known.

And it’s because of that that we can believe in that home in which there’s hope that He has indeed made ready a place for us in what is a place that is unlike this in which we live under so much weight and inside so much strain, all because we too have accepted the plain of fame and seek it incessantly in fortune and friendship.

As if those things can prove our lives immune to struggle or hardship!

They can’t!

Don’t you get it yet? That it’s all a lie? That everything you see is nothing but a seed showing you something that is 9 times out of 10 so far from the truth that it exists only to make us lose our grip on the fact that, honestly, our lives aren’t that bad and nor are theirs really that good. It’s all photoshop and filters and ai writing the captions and algorithms making sure it’s always seen by those who seek for such evidence of a better life that they’ve become convinced they’re not able to live.

Friends, we live in a world in which we look out our windows and see a society drowning in happiness, flooded with fun, enjoying so much enjoyment that it seems that everyone else’s life is so filled with pleasure and excitement that ours are left feeling empty, pointless, worthless even.

Yes, we’ve allowed the deception to define for us how miserable our lives are, something we agree anymore proven inside a simple scroll through those with perfect bodies and millions of fans because of it.

Neither of which we have.

No, that’s something that’s made our lives seem always so bad. It’s that we’re daily bombarded with this endless opportunity to see everything that everyone else has that we don’t. And what do we see more often than not? That they’re not struggling. That they’re not hurting. That they’re not broke or lonely or scared. No, instead we walk alongside an entire world living such perfect lives that our eyes know only to see all the ways in which our lives just don’t measure up.

And that’s all on top of the daily challenges we all face anyway.

Truly, we’re, thanks to this culture of comparison and competition and the consumption that both arrive us at, we’re only compounding our problems by allowing ourselves to dive all the time into this belief that everything we see is true and everything we don’t just doesn’t exist.

But friends, everyone struggles. Everyone hurts. All of have known pain and heartbreak and sadness and sorrow and shame (I hope). And yet that hope is yet one more that’s starting to go the same way toward that same place that many of them have. And why is that? Because it’s seriously starting to seem as if our world has simply moved beyond shame as anymore folks are doing some of the most heinous, the most horrific, the most hellish things all while having millions watch on in approval.

And yet these are the same people that we look up to and seek to be like, be liked by?

Look, I know all about this version of life that this world sells us in which we can get 6-pack abs in as little as 6 seconds a day and all the money and fame we can find if we just learn the right lines to say and buy a nice lighting setup that will help us make our posts look just right. And I know why we love these lies. It’s because, yeah, it would be nice if we really could find that version of life that’s lived like theirs seemingly are as they seem to know next to nothing of the many hardships and miseries that we deal with every day.

It would be amazing to finally break free from this way of life spent struggling, hurting, worrying all the time.

But friends, the truth is that that life doesn’t exist here. And anyone then who seems to be living it, sorry to tell you but they’re lying to you. And yeah, it seems anymore that even our own eyes are often guilty of doing the same as it does seem as if we do so often see those who are living a life utterly free of all the trial and torment that we’ve known.

They know it too, they just don’t show it to you because, again, they know that nobody is going to pay for tips and tricks to a way of life that isn’t anything like everything they pretend it is.

Because, well, there are no tips and tricks because, again, a perfect life isn’t possible here in what is a world that is increasingly broken and lost inside a darkness and deception that are each deepening by the day.

The issue is that the deception is exactly what we so wish we could have as, again, it sure would be nice to finally break free from this way of life in which we struggle so much as we do.

But friends, we need the struggles of this life. We need to meet hardship from time to time. We need to know fear and failure both as they both know far better than confidence and success how to get through the rest of what’s already unfolding. Indeed, pain is arguably one of the very best teachers we could ever hope to have as it teaches us how to endure that which is bad whilst also learning, thanks to the misery, to believe toward something better.

But what better could we ever believe in if our lives here were as perfect as so many live to pretend theirs are?

Again, I get it. We’re stuck for now inside a world that’s filled with this lie that this life could be, should be our best version of it. And yeah, we’re surrounded by those who are seeming to live their best lives as it seems they find only success and nothing of struggle. In fact, those who seem to be living perfect lives are so easy to find that it’s almost becoming impossible not to see them as, again, our phones stream them right into our faces upwards of 200 times a day.

It’s a lie.

It’s fake.

It simply does not actually exist as there is here no perfect life lived without pain, without struggle, without strife. Now sure, many here may never let their flaws or fears show for the camera they live through for those who live through phones looking at their images of perfection. But we’re only fooling ourselves if we honestly think any of it’s real. We’re only making our lives seem worse, feel harder, grow more miserable so long as we agree to believe that there are those who are actually living without pain or fear or loneliness or whatever.

Sure, there may seem to be so many around us living the kind of life that we would love to live as, yeah, it gets old carrying all these burdens we know.

But friends, how much worse is our burden made whenever we buy the lie that this world is living a life that doesn’t have them?

Again, I understand that we’re all tired and torn and just trying to find some reason, some hope that’s able to keep us going. But we just can’t keep agreeing to continue living a life spent seeing that hope in whatever another has here, or says they have here. And that’s because it doesn’t matter what we have here. No, what matters most is where we go from here, not what we go through on the way. So let us stop looking to those pretending they’re going through nothing to help us figure out how to do the same and instead just embrace the fact that this life is supposed to suck so that Heaven can become the peace it’s supposed to be.

For in truth, we have to know war to know something so amazing as peace.

Let this life then be our war and let us not worry whenever it is. Because contrary to popular lie, this is not as good as it gets nor can anything here ever be.

This is rather the place we’re promised to leave.

Question is what will we leave behind when we do? Perfect lives we hate to lose? Or lives made of storms we can’t wait to be through?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold