Day 4101 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hebrews 12:11 NIV

What is correction?

Is it, as pride would abide, a simple matter of being correct? Is it, as humility might imagine, a willingness to being corrected? Is it something that we’re here only to offer others, a sort of guidance or direction given them from what is our own measure of understanding and perfection? Is it another offering unto us their assumptions and estimations as to the investigations they see we’re at present undertaking? Is it something someone can offer? Is it anything anyone can accept? Is it such a losing fight that it takes guards day and night at a facility meant to accomplish it?

Is it a hope to curb our lawlessness?

Is it a law given to curb our brokenness?

I for one find it a love given to all of us from He who, let’s be honest, has at this point no reason whatever to keep offering it. It seems a kindness that He’s willing to help us with all this chosen blindness that’s in need of such correction if ever we’re even to see what life itself is meant to be. Otherwise, judging from the common ways in which we live our lives losing our minds, well, that seems then all that we’d remain all too likely to find.

Just a horde of people holding out hope for both the hostility to end and yet for them to be the ones who win.

A discrepancy designed inside a mind so far gone that we honestly don’t seem to know which direction to take anymore. And I feel this proven pretty much perfectly within the public display of, well, not much changing and most of us agreeing not to either. Indeed, there’s come a social stagnancy that we all seem almost eager to either take part in or at least voice our approval of.

And why?

Because for quite some time it’s been made perfectly clear that we’d all rather hear that we’re doing okay right where we are as thus who we’ve become than to become de-numbed to the reality that where we are is a world on fire and that because who we’ve become is a people so numb to reality that we seem to think, again socially, that we can just go around pouring gasoline on everything and not end up losing anything ourselves.

Guess time will tell, but in all honesty, I think it already has.

For again, looking around at what the world’s become thanks to who we’ve all chosen to at first become and then apparently forever remain, things are pretty bad. Not just a little. Not every now and then. No. Bad has become our good as is proven, this time I know perfectly, in that light is at present being put for darkness and too the opposite. Yes, this world has become a place in which the common voice tells us that only the good die young, which it also hints at being a bad thing because, well, apparently death remains only the end of life.

And thus life is supposed to be spent being the bad boy who gets the girl because nice guys finish last?

Guess I can understand that as, well, yeah, I’ve personally spent my life trying mostly to do good and be the same, or at least as close as I alone thought I could come, and indeed I am all alone without the girl and that without much hope of that ever changing.

What has changed, thanks in no part to any part I’ve played, is that I now delight in the idea of finishing last. Probably mostly because Scripture tells us that the last shall be first and whomever wishes to be first in the Kingdom of God must begin by seeking to become servant of all. It’s the whole washing of feet thing as was done by the Son who had come to literally die for those who’d insist He did.

Yeah, easy to see that this life isn’t actually for our to win.

Not anything.

Which, as it sits, remains pretty much the problem. And that one proven in that, rather than our abiding by another truth given us in the Word which tells us that godliness with contentment is great gain, instead we go to such lengths and endure such pain and strain and struggle and stress trying to find and have and hold so much that everyone around us is always impressed.

All because most everyone here is only impressed with what we have rather than who we are.

And, well, I guess that one makes sense too considering how who we are is by means nothing to brag about as, well, doesn’t make much sense to try and make such things as liars and thieves seem more impressive than they can be as they’ve defined the scumbags we’ve become. And so yeah, surrounding our souls so soured and sold with things we can have and hold and show off to all those who seek themselves contentment in a life’s content seems the perfect compromise.

After all, it’s both easier to buy the things that the masses find impressive than to endure the working on ourselves that would perhaps help us to become something a tad more impressive, and in all honesty it’s just cheaper too.

For it’s true that you can literally purchase a pretty impressive lifestyle thanks to such things as style and cars and houses and such.

But actually becoming more impressive, as a person, well, that one requires a measure of humility that’s, as mentioned up top, is willing to welcome correction. Because it knows that it doesn’t know everything. And that even should we come to own everything that fact wouldn’t change. And that that fact which says that we don’t know everything cannot change no matter what we have, well, that seems to suggest that what we have means nothing if who we are hasn’t a bettered meaning.

Which is the entire point of His choosing to discipline us.

It’s to help us become something better, arguably proven in something as simple as our no longer wanting more of all that we’d wanted before that, despite our having at least some of it, apparently didn’t help with who we were.

For it’s been told us that it matters not what we have as all such material possessions will be left within this place in which we have them. And too that should they have too much of us, so then will we have had our reward in what is the place that time will eventually prove we weren’t meant to stay. And indeed, we see inside of every single day nearly every single person living this life that way. For here, again, what we have seems to matter more still than who we are.

Why?

Because we can apparently change what we have but continue to refuse any change as to who we’ve become.

It’s honestly as if folks think it death in waiting for them to start changing. We’ve all become so afraid of doing something different that we rarely, if ever, doing anything new. And again, while that may be obviously easier as it’s always going to be simpler to keep doing as you’ve always done than endure the learning curve in doing as you’ve never tried, the fact is that life here and as we’re living it isn’t the destination.

This is just the time in which we choose the direction.

But the problem has again become that we’ve become a people almost seemingly glued in place. And as usual I’ll be the very first to admit the same. And that because, years back I did decide to make a change and set out to find something better, me being the something. And indeed, through a fair deal of hard work and change I have become something better than I used to be.

Problem now seems to have become that I’ve become once again entirely terrified of changing too much. I’ll at best dabble with the idea, perhaps make a tiny little tweak or two, but for the most part I feel as if my life is so stuck inside this rut that is my routine that I find myself worrying that I’ll lose everything I’ve worked so hard for should I risk changing too much or doing much different.

It’s like that scene from Rocky 3 when he breaks down on the beach and tells Adrian that he’s afraid to lose what he has.

Literally just like that!

And I know we’ve all felt that, probably feel it now. We’re daily presented with these things called options and each of them brings with it the risk of something. And the thing with all risk is that we often don’t know what it is.

Problem when it comes to faith is that we do know what it is.

And that’s that it’s everything.

Because, well, the call to crosses carried doesn’t bring with it any real choice as to what all of us, in us gets placed upon it. Crosses just kill and that the entire sum of everything that defines everyone ever hung on one. And so in His asking us to take up our crosses and follow Him, what He’s asking friends is that, like the rich guy who refused to try, we sell off everything we have and agree to a life spent seeking nothing to replace it here.

He’s asking us to embrace the very death of all we’ve been so that, in Him, we can finally become something different, something better.

And why is the ask what it is?

Because we’ve become so confused, so hateful, so sinful that we’re thus in need of so much correction, so much discipline, so much forgiveness that, at this point, it’s best to just start over.

Just wipe the slate clean and get rid of everything and literally start from the bottom, which is basically where we’ve both arrived and convinced ourselves to keep living.

At the bottom.

Indeed, we’ve each of us settled for this existence in which the very substance of our every thought and every action and even every word we’ve basically ever spoken has become so dark and demented that, with souls this dented and damaged, we actually don’t have near as much to lose as we somehow still manage to assume we do. And the truth is that we only really assume we have something left to lose because being lost has become the only life we know.

And so to be found, to be fixed, to be forgiven, it’s all something so very foreign that we’ve no idea what to do with it.

So we reject it.

We refuse it.

We refuse He who asks us to do it.

Not because He doesn’t have some points nor that they don’t make far more sense than our obvious senselessness as shown inside our every sinfulness. It’s just we’ve become so prideful, and thus unwilling to change, that we now see any hint at our being corrected, being disciplined, being chastised and changed as everything rude and hateful and, yes, maybe even personally harmful.

After all, who in their right mind could look at our lives, so amazing as we love to assume they are, and see anything that isn’t right or that needs some change?

No friends, who in their right mind would look at our lives and see in them anything that was right and didn’t need to change?

Again, just look around at the world we’re in.

Hate to break it to you but we all had a hand in that!

Because, well, truth is that we’ve all talked behind someone’s back. We’ve all told lies trying to make ourselves look good to those who would do the same to us. We’ve all taken things that weren’t ours, some have made a career of it. We’ve all made idols of basically everything. We’ve all spoken in a language utterly foul just because we’ve become convinced that it’s funny. We’ve all taken part in mocking and making jokes of others simply because our friends were doing the same.

Yes, we’ve each succumbed to the purpose of peer pressure which exists only to inspire us to do as everyone else is doing meaning then that, yeah, if our friends jumped off a bridge we probably would too.

Why?

Because we don’t know what else to do but than to follow those around us trying always to please or impress the same.

And it’s this lane in which we’ve lived and loved, and sadly lost more than many opportunities to do both but better, that we ourselves then seem entirely terrified of our own being better. Rather we see a world that applauds people for being true to themselves, for having the apparent courage to be whoever they want to be, for agreeing to being nothing but whatever it is that they’ve already become.

Why?

Because we’re so numb to our need, and capacity, for improvement that anymore we just don’t want anything to do with it.

We despise correction. We rebuke discipline. We carry ourselves through every single day as if the way we’re living our lives already is the only best way for us to be living them.

Is it?

Is it really?

For if it were, well, you’d think we’d all at least be happy. But we’re not are we? In all honesty, again speaking personally, me and being happy has had such a strange relationship that I don’t even know if I actually remember what it felt like to be happy. I don’t know if I ever have been! I assume I have. But friends, is something such as happiness really something we should just willfully leave to assumption?

How about improvement? Growth? Hope? Healing? Those things we should continue just chalking up to believing we either already have them figured out and found or rather just things we don’t really need?

How do we know what we need when it seems pretty clear that our entire way of life being lived down here is one constantly lost to want?

Again, don’t we always find that we always want something else that we think will make us look more impressive to someone else? Has anything of everything we’ve ever had brought us a joy that managed to last? Have we ever made any choices that only found us lost? Do we even have any idea how much we’ve lost thanks to the life we’ve lived being only lived at the direct expense of the one we didn’t?

Have we even it in us to think such thoughts as that or are we instead so very sure that what we’re doing is always what we should that we still can’t see any mistakes we’ve made nor how they all gather together to form this truth which says we need help?

Indeed, to need help or accept guidance or, and worst of all, embrace correction are all things that we’ve always seemed to believe were beneath us. That we could do this all on our own and somehow prove to have done it all so perfectly that nobody would ever be able to disagree.

Friends, God disagrees. And we can know this because Christ died on a cross for sins He didn’t commit.

And now sure, we can all do as many here seem entirely content to and show up to Heaven one day entirely ready to make the case that they weren’t our sins He died for either.

But do we really think we can make that stick considering some of the sick things we’ve either done or at least looked with approval upon?

The reason we avoid such a verdict is because it hurts to admit that we have made mistakes, that we have gotten things wrong, that we’ve all done things that shame or regret or guilt prove we never should have even considered. It’s not enjoyable in any way to realize all the ways in which we need to change. It’s humiliating. It’s embarrassing. It’s all but physically crippling to look upon the sum of all the mistakes we’ve made and all those we’ve hurt in doing so.

Which is why we don’t.

We refuse the discipline of being disciplined, not because we honestly don’t think we need such correction, but simply because it feels better to us to believe we’re already correct than to be shown all the ways in which we’re not. Nobody enjoys having all their flaws and failures pointed out. Nobody enjoys having their mistakes held high for all to see. None of us enjoy hearing the sound of that still small voice telling us that we shouldn’t have said that word or had that thought or bought that newest piece of junk we’ll only eventually sell in a garage sale when it’s no longer impressive to anyone.

But we need that voice to tell us those things because it’s God helping us toward the better we can never become without His help. For time has already proven that we’re all perfectly prone to staying lost in this delusion that tells us we’re either not doing anything wrong or that it’s not quite wrong enough that we need to do anything about it.

Probably because deep down we know that we can’t do anything about it.

But friends, that’s always been His entire point! It’s that we’re not meant to do this on our own but that we’re instead meant to seek help from He who is the Way. That we’re supposed to welcome His help in our becoming something that our sins and scars prove we cannot be otherwise.

And that’s holy, blameless, a people set aside as the bride of the Bridegroom who is coming back but only to welcome home those who are ready to go.

How can we know if we’re ready to go to a place we’ve never been as a people we’ve often refused to become?

No friends, we need help if we’re to be welcomed into that place in which sin cannot come. And the help we need is His washing away our sinfulness and helping us to not walk back into it again. And no, again, that’s not fun because, to us, sin has become fun. It’s become enjoyable, entertaining, lucrative even. And so yeah, we have a lot to lose in His asking us to change.

A whole life in fact.

But the fact is that if we don’t, well then we’ll never know anything more than whoever we already are. And while most folks around here seem okay with that, deep down none of us can be because we all can see the outcome of things that shouldn’t be done, and that even in our own heads and hearts.

Thankfully He offers us a new start, a fresh beginning, a literal rebirth into a life so new and so different that we only grow to detest all that we have been. And no, it’s not easy but proves rather most days a right misery having to come to terms with all the things we’ve done that have led us to the sinners we’ve become. It’s like waking up to a meat grinder every single day. But over time it becomes one we want to go through so as to make sure we can fit through the narrow gate.

My point is that we don’t need safe, we don’t need easy, and we definitely don’t need comfortable.

We need change. We need challenge.

We need to be corrected, to be disciplined.

Why?

Because without them we’ll never find life.

We’ll just settle for staying put inside the death we’ve come to love, all because we’ve all become entirely convinced that we’ve too much to lose.

Friends, since when is being lost, weak, lazy anything to fear letting go?

Yes, His path is one hard to hold and that because it continues to hold an honesty so brutal that it simply refuses to let us get by with anything. But that’s a good thing. Not because it feels good but because pain signals growth, it opens the door to healing, it brings with it this feeling that things can get better.

And, well, better is exactly what we need and honestly should want. And that no matter how we have to get there.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold