Day 4126 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 7:15 NIV

continues ahead through confusion

Simply because that’s what life’s become. It’s a confusion. It’s a delusion. It’s nothing but a daily decision to make as many things as complicated and confusing as we can somehow convince ourselves we need to confuse. It’s this pattern we repeat in which we choose to lose what is the violent simplicity of all such things as honesty and humility for what are their ongoing and warm-welcoming counterparts. Indeed, it’s as if every single day anymore all but starts with our minds convinced that it’s all falling apart and that because we’ve become entirely convinced that we’re the ones meant to hold it all together.

How can this be my sister, my brother?

How can we be the ones who hold our lives, our minds, ourselves, our souls together? How can those who’ve proven time and again that we have no idea what we’re doing be then the same as they who somehow manage to at some point prove able to manage that which they’ve only messed up, mistaken, taken for granted or just plain missed altogether?

Truly, we haven’t even any clue as to all the things we were supposed to do as instead we’ve done more than plenty of all those which regret now helps us see we shouldn’t have done.

So much so that, at least as far as I can measure and thus contend, we’ve lost an entire lifetime already!

If you’ve been reading these posts for any time at all then you’ll know what I’m saying. Here lately I’ve had such this weight on me telling me that I’ve missed more than I’ve found. That I skipped a life that I didn’t then live in preference of the one that I did. That I, inside every choice I’ve ever made, made what was a path through what was my life, each one though made at the direct expense of the other choice(s) I didn’t make. And this weight is my wonder, my worry as to what all is missing thanks to what all I missed, messed up, mistook for something that I didn’t think would, could be a mistake.

Only for it to become one anyway.

And oh, I’ve such a list of those!

I’ve made so many mistakes inside my share of this confusion that Paul talks about here. So many poor choices that led obviously to poor results. Chased after so many idols that have since proven so hollow. Looked for and toward so many hopes that only went up in smoke the closer I got to whatever it was that I thought they were. Wanted so many things that I thought, no, that I knew were worth the wanting only to have gotten more than half and that only to realize that I wanted something else even more.

And yet what scares me the most are the mistakes I’ve missed. The ones that I made without yet realizing I made them. The foolish things I’ve done without yet understanding the foolishness proven within them. All the things I’ve chosen and chased that have yet to prove a waste.

It scares me to death wondering through all the what if’s.

But I’m coming to realize that what’s even worse are those that I don’t know to wonder about.

For I’m fairly certain that there are a large number of things in our lives that we’re all doing that we still think are right to be doing. After all, why else would we continue doing them? We’re not a people of obvious errors, at least from our perspectives. Rather we’re a people who pour so much time and intention into everything we’re doing that everything we’re doing is thus something done because we think it’s worth the time and intention. We think it’ll accomplish for us something and that said something will be something good.

Indeed, we’ll do nothing if we’re not all but certain as to what’s in it for us and that built either atop or within the trust that whatever it is that’s in it for us is for our benefit.

Truly, if we can’t see that something will pay off in whatever way and to whatever measure we want, we just won’t do it. And in fact we’re a people who seem entirely content to do nothing. We’re doing less and less all the time. In fact I’ve come to find a new sadness inside nearly every single day as inside every single day news is brought of yet another loss of what was once seen as something that provided a good opportunity. Every single day people are discounting further such things as discipline and devotion and determination.

We’re shaking hands with our own damnation and smiling as we sign the dotted line.

Not then even caring to read what all it is that we’ve to give away in order to get whatever it is that we know only to want obviously more than the keeping of whatever we’re losing.

What are we losing?

Well, that’s a list that’s entirely too long to cover in a single post and too one that I honestly don’t think we can know the entirety of right now. And that’s because, as of right now, we’re still inside what is a world in which still it seems that we’re confused as to even what’s good. We’re a people of such uncertainty that we change our minds daily. And while that may prove fairly harmless when it comes to such matters as what to wear and what we may or may not want for dinner, I find a rather dire danger whenever the same is considered inside the larger meanings of life.

I mean we’re even to the point in this downfall in which folks are finding inside them this necessity to define for themselves whatever their gender may be.

Some even opting for one defined by fluidity which then means that it’s flowing, shifting, changing, something they thus retain the right to change as they may assume needed so that it always aligns with however they’re feeling or whatever they’re thinking or wherever they’re going.

Indeed, we’re a people entirely malleable, something of playdough that is entirely willing if not at this point excited to be shoved and squeezed and that into places that please whomever it is that we may be seeking to so satisfy for what’s honestly usually only a moment or two at a time.

Which is what defines this belief I have that we’re losing everything from our minds to our lives.

It’s because, well, when there’s no firmness, no solidity, no certainty to anything we’re doing, then what are we doing? Why are we doing it? Why are we chasing it? Why are we wanting it?

Do we even know what we want anymore?

I mean it used to be that you’d hear all about this American Dream. It was this thing that involved a nice career, a couple cars, 2.5 kids (not sure where we were supposed to all come up with the ½, guess maybe some could have 3 and split the third with those who only had 2?), a warm house in a quiet neighborhood with a white picket fence, probably a dog and plans always for cookouts on the weekend.

Yeah, that’s gone.

As in we literally don’t talk about any of those things anymore. Nobody seems to want for those things anymore. Instead everyone seems pretty content to continue ahead into what is the way of life we’ve chosen instead in which everyone is bored, lonely, alone, afraid, angry, filled with an ever-swelling sense of anxiety, broke, confused, sad, unhealthy, unhappy, obviously unholy.

And yet we’re all seemingly okay with it.

Why?

Because we don’t know what we want anymore. And, well, when we don’t know what we want then we’re probably not going to be found doing much either. And, well, whenever we’re not doing much we clearly then don’t know much about who we are, why we’re here, what all matters and what more doesn’t.

And I consider this fact proven inside so many of the things that people are doing.

Something itself proven in how many videos we’re seeing start to popup of people suddenly realizing the presence of such things as technology addiction in their lives. I’ve seen a ton of people who are starting to talk about how tired and upset and just plain frustrated with themselves that they’ve become having become so connected to what is a world that’s increasingly disconnected. And that’s because what we’ve become is a people who have each separated ourselves from one another into what are little virtual worlds in which we’re basically the only ones who exist.

Even to the point of our being the ones who teach the robots what to say so that they never say anything we don’t want to hear.

All but proving we’ve arrived squarely upon the time forewarned of in Scripture in which it’s said that a time would come (has now came) in which folks would no longer endure sound doctrine but rather, having itching ears, would gather about themselves a large number of teachers who would say what they wanted to hear.

Yep, we’re there!

Problem is that we have no idea where we are, who we are, where we’re going, what we’re doing, what we’re missing, what we’re losing.

Rather, again, we just keep waking up to sign on the dotted line as we get in line following behind those we’ve come to trust to lead us toward what we all seemingly agree to socially assume is best.

Friends, what if it isn’t?

That’s a question I ask because, well, here at 38 I’ve been shown unto the miserable realization as to at least some of the things I may have missed having chosen to live what was a life in which I’ve spent so much effort and time upon things that only let me down and proved then to be entirely unworthy the time and energy that I gave to them. I’m talking friends I didn’t have because I tried to have friends that were never my friends after all. I’m talking jobs I worked that I absolutely hated that kept me from doing things that I would have enjoyed far more instead.

I’m talking about going to college and getting a degree I never used and a debt I’ll never square.

Literally one of the top 3 mistakes I’ve ever made!

But the point is that in this life we all do so many things thinking them the things we’re supposed to do, things that are good to do, even things that are right to do. And all of that only to maybe one day find that we were wrong.

Blessed are the ones who are able to realize their wrongs!

Truly, I consider such things as regret and shame amongst God’s greater blessings.

Why?

Because they speak to the severity of life that we otherwise ignore. They remind us of the importance of all that we do and why then we should take it all far more seriously than so often we have. They tell us of the danger found in doing things for such reasons as ease or comfort or commonality. They warn us away from doing things for such feeble reasonings going forward.

Problem is that they come at us in this sense of confusion that we simply don’t enjoy as this prideful people we’ve become who are thus all but entirely dumb unto the sum of all we’re doing and how, well, at least some of it might not be quite so right as we’ve long hoped it might. Because all of us want to be right. We all want to feel as if we’re justified in doing whatever we do. We want to believe that our reasons won’t eventually become excuses that we have to come up with excuses trying to excuse.

But they do.

Or at least they should.

Alas anymore it seems more often as though they don’t. Rather anymore it seems as if we’re all always quite resoundingly able to convince ourselves to not see the issues, the dangers, the failures found in doing whatever we are. We’re becoming willfully blind to the stupidities in our lives. Not because they’re not there but simply because we’ve become too weak to confess they are.

Yes, you read that right.

We’re weak.

And I say this because, unlike Paul here, very rarely will you ever find anyone who’s even anywhere close to being willing to admit anything that they’re doing may not be something they should be. Rarely will you hear anyone talk about something they got wrong. Rarely will you find anyone posting online about some mistake they made. Instead what we tend to find is this horde of folks who are apparently getting everything so very right, and that all the time, that they feel themselves obliged to become influencers who then exist to show other unto the outcomes they’ve come to find.

According to a recent study, and by that I mean 2-3 years ago, 57% of people born between 1997 and 2012 dream of being influencers.

Not doctors. Not lawyers. Not astronauts or professional baseball players.

No, they want to be social media influencers.

Tell me then how it is that we’re all this convinced that we know what we’re doing and that we’re all doing it well.

Friends, if that were truly the case then this world wouldn’t be in this kind of shape.

But it is because the truth is that, like Paul, we all keep doing things that we shouldn’t be doing. We all keep saying things that we have no business saying. We’ve all in fact had our brains rewired to think things that we shouldn’t know to think, shouldn’t want to think. But sadly, unlike Paul, we’ve again all become entirely too prideful (weak) to admit it.

Instead we just keep waking up every single day and willingly repeating it.

And, well, nothing then will ever change so long as none of us determine to.

Which sadly most folks won’t because we’ve built a world that literally tells us that needn’t to.

Because that’s exactly what we want to hear.

That we’re doing well. That we’re always right. That we’re living our very best life and are oh so bold and brave to be doing so.

Friends, what’s so courageous about living a lie? And, honestly, who of us is entirely happy with our lives? Who of us never gets anything wrong? Who of us never makes a mistake or misses the mark? Who of us isn’t afraid of the dark or that similar sense of danger discovered in our trying to do something new? Who of us isn’t terrified of change? Who of us won’t then probably choose to stay mostly the same because of it?

But friends, that’s just it!

What is the same that we continue to stay?

Are we good with it? Is it really something we’re proud of, thankful for, honestly excited to always stay and thus never be, see anything more?

Or are we not all at least somewhat unhappy, uncertain, confused, lost, angry, scared, alone, tired, hurting?

All of those pains, be them physical or mental or spiritual or emotional, they’re all evidence that something’s off. Problem is that we rarely try to find whatever it is because that just might cause us to become inspired to do something about it. And, well, again we’ve sadly become a people who’d rather do nothing and think we’re doing good enough than to admit we’re not and have to then do something to make things better.

And that’s the confusion that this faith leads us into.

It’s that realization that, well, no, we’re not good. We’re not happy. We don’t feel well. Life isn’t going well. Our plans have gone to pot, we’ve all clearly lost the plot, we’re endlessly unsure, entirely uncertain, always afraid of something whilst still usually more preoccupied with trying to find something else that we rarely have any time or energy left to worry about why.

Ironic isn’t it?

No, in fact it isn’t.

It’s obvious why we do it. It clear why we all chase after so many idols and ideals. It’s easy to see why we continue to agree to just repeating the same things day in and day out.

It’s because it allows us to become convinced that we’re doing things pretty well and thus needn’t fix, change, improve, repent or lose anything then.

We can just stay the same.

And that’ll always prove the easiest thing to do.

But it doesn’t change the fact that deep down in those places we don’t talk about at parties, we all do things we hate doing. Not that we hate them in the moment necessarily. But we hate how they make us feel. We hate the regrets they bring, the shame they leave. We hate the weakness within them that we see. We hate that we can see such weakness in our doing of things that, at least on the surface, we sure seem to enjoy.

And yet we continue doing them for what’s probably nothing more than a moment of pleasure or pride, even mere distraction sometimes.

That’s why we’re all always glued to our phones.

It’s because I think we know the thoughts we might have to think if ever we’re left a moment free to see whoever it is that we’ve sadly come to be.

So we fill our times and bind our eyes with all there is in life that turns our focus away from the fact that we’re failing and falling short and that both of the glory of God but all of the good of us.

We’re daily letting ourselves down, and yet most won’t realize it until it’s entirely too late to do anything about it. Because we’re afraid of the confusion. We’re terrified of admitting that we don’t know what we’re doing. We hate the idea of confessing that we don’t feel well anymore. Because we’ve spent so much time crafting this lie that has everyone around us entirely convinced that we’re okay.

And we don’t want to let them down.

So instead we agree to destroy ourselves inside the doing of things that we don’t want to do, don’t like to do simply because it’s all what we’re expected to. And that perhaps even by ourselves.

Indeed, so much of the truth to which this faith opens our eyes will absolutely shatter our lives, break our minds, expose our lies and show us that we’re wasting our time every time that we continue to do whatever it is that we think is best for us to. And it’s a confusion unlike any other as it seems always only to inspire us to question everything, especially everything that we’re saying or thinking or doing.

All because God knows that odds are we’re going to find that much of what we are doing is only everything we hate doing.

Or at least that’s the hope.

And that’s because the truth is that we cannot become anything better until we meet first with the realization that at least some of what we’re doing is only all that’s keeping us from doing the better that we want so bad to be doing.

I get it friends, humility is a strange thing to a people of such pride. But until we open our eyes to the honesty found in our admitting that we’re not good with how things are going, not okay with some of the things we’re doing, nothing about any of it will start changing.

And if nothing about us ever changes, well then I dare say we’ll one day find that we never found out what living this life was really all about.

And that’s just a really sad thing to miss.

A fact we should already know thanks to all we’ve missed because of all the things we chose instead that have since proven only mistakes.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold