Day 4122 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 17:9 NIV

A descent into madness

I’ve realized over the last several posts that, at least to those outside my mind reading these many words which flow from within the same, it may appear as though I’ve begun to go insane. And to be perfectly honest, I’ve moments in which I myself wonder both just how close I am and too then how far I am away. For in all honesty it does seem as if I am maybe getting closer every day inside what is this way in which my life’s gone in which I go to this amazing place all the time in which I actually delight to find all that I’ve gotten wrong in life.

A place seemingly few either know to go or even imagine exists.

But as here I sits every single morning trying to find some novel way to present this warning that is His Word as was written for our good, a gift bought by exposing our bad, I feel anymore as if the attempts only grow more desperate, more disparate, more different and thus dissimilar to what seems to still remain the way in which most here continue to live and breathe and join hands and sing what is this song as life goes along to wherever it is that this life of ours will end.

It’s just that I find myself slowly losing the ability to understand the words and rhyme.

Instead I find that most days I feel a man out of time, out of place, and yes, sometimes out of mind. And that’s because so much of what I think about has no similarity or comparison to what it seems most others are thinking about. And while you can’t hear someone else’s thoughts, unless they’re one of those who simply seem to insist upon saying everything that pops in their head, the simple fact is that, well, seems that most folks lean decidedly that direction.

Most people are so busy talking about so many things, thoughts, theories, trophies, triumphs, tragedies that I worry how much room is left for just themselves to dabble inside time spent thinking thoughts that nobody else knows about.

Which are the ones that I find are the most appealing anymore as, well, they’re the only ones that seem to have anything interesting to say.

Everything else that everyone else is talking about, worrying about, fighting about, it’s just losing all importance to me. And now that’s not to say that I’m beginning to lose my willingness or interest in caring about others as that couldn’t be farther from the case.

If anything I contend that it could be argued that this separation I feel inside is only there because I care only more.

But the issue seems to be that I seem to see that the more I do care in what’s daily becoming a world that cares less and less about all that to me matters most, I just find that my mind is letting go of all I’ve come to know and all the more that most insist I should.

Because, to be honest, I’ve had enough of all this world and all this stuff and all the social pressure to fit in and go along and be who everyone else has too decided to become.

Why?

Because I’ve been there already.

I’ve been what others wanted me to be. In fact I spent the vast majority of my younger years lost within this fear of failing to remain all the things that I’d only become seeking to be whatever it was someone else wanted from me. And granted, it was all done for what still seem commendable reasons as, well, such things as friendship and kindness and compassion will always be important things to reach for.

The issue comes inside the lows we reach toward in a life spent trying to seek for ways to be what this world wants us to be, and even those in which it insists we show such things as love and mercy.

Which are, as far as I can tell, two things that are rapidly fading in our world today.

And that’s because they’ve been all but usurped and commandeered and forced to become almost matters we fear. And that’s because, take love for example, anymore if you don’t love everyone and everything then you’re considered a monster, a bigot, a prude, a loser, a deplorable by those found within the group that you don’t agree with. And that’s because, to this world, love is merely agreement. It’s acceptance. It’s approval. It’s looking with appreciation upon the entire substance of the existence of another and never once voicing any potential misunderstanding or pointing out any plausible mistake.

For to most here that is merciful, just letting one another do whatever the other wants even if it means allowing them to remain on what will prove the wrong side of eternity.

All because most here are tangled up trying to prove that they’ll be, eventually, on the right side of history.

A lie believed because most here seem to see that they’ve this power to determine the future and how those who come after will judge our merits and meaning.

Proving perfectly the deceit inside.

For we’ve all been so deceived into a life in which we’ve all believed so many similar things. In truth, I don’t think we can ever know the number of lies we’ve accepted as truth, at least not here. In fact, as just a quick example of how insane I may in fact be becoming, for the last several days now I’ve been at first asking and now all but begging God to help me see, let me see all the mistakes I’ve made in my life thus far.

Why?

Because I want to know what all I’ve gotten wrong.

May not be anything at all that I can do about it as we all know perfectly well that life only goes in one direction and thus there are no do-overs, no time machines, no opportunities to go back thus and do anything any differently. And so yeah, my asking Him to help me see as much of my life’s mistakes and misunderstandings as possible seems something perhaps even perfectly stupid.

For why welcome the misery?

That’s never been anything that anyone has ever sought. Rather we’re a people who’ve bought in bulk this idea that at worst we’re not doing half bad. Indeed, throughout my time anytime anyone has asked that once-common and now-fading “How you doing?” my response has always been “pretty good.” Doing pretty good. Not too bad. Fair to middling. Can’t complain. Doing okay.

What is okay?

And, well, when did it become the goal?

And why does it seem to be somewhere, something different for everyone?

Does this not prove us all insane?

I think it does but then again I may be losing my mind, so there’s that.

But what seems really strange to me is that, again thanks to the last couple of posts, I’ve come to an almost excitement about that being the case. I’m thankful that I see things in such a strange way. I’m grateful that God’s given me the opportunity to keep thinking and writing and hoping that between the both I’m able to share something that helps someone, encourages somebody.

And that despite the majority of these being quite pointed if not perfectly offensive.

Which are both things we’re supposed to avoid here at all costs because, well, should we ever find ourselves disparaging of another, odds are said other will have no willingness left to hear anything we have to say no matter how deeply we may feel we have to say it.

For around here if it neither coddles nor commends then nobody seems all that interested.

Which is why the Bible remains the book that so many know so little about. It’s because the Gospel’s offensive as it paints us as the villains who killed an innocent man thanks to mistakes we’ve made that He calls sin that He defines as having won a wage that is our death, a death that was endured by He who is the Christ who paid said debt that is our death upon a sinner’s cross, was thereafter lain in a tomb which was sealed closed for three days only to be emptied out when He got up and walked out unto the new life, the eternal life that He’s promised unto all those who come unto Him via repentance which is the turning away from all manner and measure of sinful inclination and selfish aspiration and personal declaration that we are indeed not sinners who should thus feel no shame as we’ve apparently made no mistakes, especially any worthy of such suffering as seen inside that scene shown us all both upon Calvary and within Scripture.

It’s madness.

All of it.

That God would become man in order to be so brutally beaten and betrayed as to die a horrific death for what are still a people who deny the entire ordeal because they, we simply refuse to ever consider that we could ever have been so wrong as to go along with what was basic murder, it’s impossible. So too the idea of resurrection as, well, everyone we’ve ever known who’s ever died pretty much stayed there. I mean even something so gracious and giving as the gift of forgiveness the Gospel says He’s given us, even that anymore seems to be seen as something both unneeded and thus unwanted.

And that’s because we’ve down here at rock bottom so misconstrued the two for one another that we know not any longer how to separate our wants from our needs as we think that we need all that we want.

Which is most often to be seen the victim not the villain.

Again pointing to how insanely impossible the entirety of the Gospel must truly be.

For truly, who in their right mind would welcome such convictions of crime as to embrace the humiliation that is humility? Who in their right mind, in a world that confesses never any mistakes or misunderstandings, who would then agree to standing, sitting, kneeling, crawling through what is the entirety of their sinful insufficiency? Who, in a society that is willing to agree with everything we say, applaud everything we do, hold as if champions thanks to a version of courage that inspires us to believe that we have our own truth that we’re here to live, who then would live via a truth which says that we’re all monsters instead?

Only someone who’s gone or is at present going mad.

And indeed, this is the descent that I find of all things most decent.

Why?

Because how else are we ever to live a better life than to be helped to see all the things that we’ve said and done, been and become that have nothing at all to do with even pretending that we know what a better life is?

How can we improve if we’re the ones who define the ways in which should or shouldn’t?

How can we grow if all growth is only a matter measured in the manner in which we ourselves insist it is?

How are we to ever heal anything or even help anyone whenever we’re the only ones who ever matter and that because we continue to contend that we need no healing or help?

How can you win any battle whenever you have no idea who you’re fighting?

And, well, how can we then expect to win this war we’re in when we still can’t see that we are indeed our own enemy?

You know, over the years, recent ones in fact, I’ve had folks look at me almost worriedly because of this new approach to life that I’ve undertaken. Family even. And granted, I’ve not really the time nor the space here to recount all the ways in which I’ve changed in recent years. But still, it seems such a perfect example of how strange our presence, our existence can become even to those who’ve known us longest whenever we finally become cognizant of our lowliness and tendency toward deception.

An honesty that I honestly fear few will ever know.

Because, again, this world continues doing everything it can to keep everyone convinced that we’re doing okay. That we’re doing well even.

We’re not.

In fact I think it would both blow our minds and break our hearts to know just how low we really are as a society, as a people, as a person.

All because we keep track of only the highlights, the victories, the triumphs and all the trophies whereas we deny the losses and scoff at the mere suggestion that we ourselves may then be lost.

No, how can that be the case considering all we’ve found along the way?

But that’s just it my friends, what have we found? What do we have? Who is it that we are?

In truth I don’t think we know because, well, I’m pretty much convinced that we just don’t want to.

Because I think we all know the truth, not our truth, but the truth would indeed set us free. But that could only ever happen would we agree to our having lived in captivity.

And we’ll not admit ourselves such slaves to anything.

Much less ourselves, for, well, again, what sense does that make?

That’s the point though. It’s that I’m tired of making sense. I’m tired of trying to find some way to address this sin problem we have in way that comes across easy, reasonable, sensible. Indeed, I’m fed up with feeling as if watered down is the only way to do anything.

No, I want the brutality. I want the humiliation. I want to be left in absolute shambles thanks to my having been drown in shame from all the things that I’ve said and done that have caused me to become that person that I’m trying everything I can inside of every day that I have to kill, to leave behind, to walk away from and allow remain as nothing but a memory and that only to be used in case I need a testimony unto the good work that He’s begun in me that began by helping be begin this descent into apparent insanity.

A journey I truly pray we all one day make whilst we’ve still the time to allow it to change our lives.

Because that’s what we need. It’s all that we need, at least in this place at this time. We need to be changed. We need to be humbled. We need to be broken. We need to be made to see all the times in which we could have done something better than whatever falsity and failure and foolishness we choose to do instead. We need to be helped unto that place in which we come face-to-face with the monsters we’ve become at the hands of all the wicked, horrible, twisted, just simply utterly messed up stuff we’ve done.

Why?

Because seeing that is all that will ever prove enough to inspire inside of us the willingness we need to wage this war that we cannot win.

At least not by ourselves.

No, our seeing the true depth of our depravity and doubt and darkness, it’s all that can accomplish for us an understanding that we need the truth of the Gospel to be as true as so many deny it could be because we also agree that our salvation is equally as impossible as it seems to be whenever we finally see the sheer degree of moral decay that we’ve willfully accepted and allowed to seem normal along the way.

There should be nothing normal about sin.

And yet down here those who are considered the most foolish of all are those who turn away from it, who speak out against it, who actually speak up about all the times inside their lives in which they fell for it. Yes, around here you’re considered an idiot, a failure, a fool, a freak should you ever dare to speak about the reality of depravity and the fact that such violent immorality has no business believing in better, let alone the very best of eternity.

That’s why I adore this descent away from everything this world is doing and saying and buying and believing and insist I do too.

No, I’ll not be another robotic member of a failing society anymore.

And because I can’t be better on my own, well then I’ll take the hand of He who offers only to help me down into the grave in which I’m to place all I’ve ever been, and that because all I’ve always been is but a sinner in need of salvation.

Yes, I will joyfully embrace every step made along behind He who is the Way, welcoming the continued narrowing of my life until the point comes in which I finally can’t live it anymore.

Because, well, the truth is that all we’re really promised in this world is that we will leave it one day or another.

May we become so broken that we finally agree to lay it down before another day comes to take away whatever we’ve failed to see is nothing we need but rather only the sum of everything we never should have been?

I pray we can.

Not because it makes sense. Not because it feels good. Not because it coincides with that lie that tells everyone else that we’re doing fine.

No, but simply because that was never the point or purpose of this place nor our time spent within it.

Rather we’re here to find that we’re but the lost who thus know not the way to where, to who we need to be, the same who’ve since been found by He who came and laid His life down so as to help us see that all we need is to do the same.

And yeah, I guess you’ve gotta be mad to do that, absolutely insane. But friends, truth is that we’re not making it out of here alive, and, well, there’s still only one Way up and out of that grave.

And that’s to descend down into it.

However crazy that may seem.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold