Day 4156 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hebrews 11:38 NIV

reappraises the applause

For among the nuance of this narrow is found an awareness as to just how shallow the acceptance of a selfish society can be, if not in fact must be. Because, indeed, this world in which we live is lived in by those who look with approval upon so many things which are in no way so worthy of being approved, appreciated, appraised even, let alone then even praised. And this is because within this place it’s been long since proven that such things as death, darkness and delusion are seen as accepted, expected in all honesty.

And we’ve all honestly gone along with that assumption as to the presumptions of everything from purpose to pain, going so very far as to make it our very purpose to avoid pain as we’ve seen inside the estimations of society no need to ever endure such downsides to this life.

No, instead we’ve all sought and in many ways seek still to have still good lives as we all still define in line with what all mankind considers to be good. We all give our time and our mind to this cultural trying to find of all such things as fun and fame. In fact we spend so much of ourselves seeking them that we’ve next to none left to do anything else or think about anything more.

More?

What could be more than all this world has in store and sells in stores to those who’ve earned the wages with which to win what we’ve all come to want? What could be more than the newest advancement poised to sweep across the planet? What could be more than our having of the next excitement to be soon brought to us by those who brought us the last thousand?

Indeed, have we not all had and not all seen not merely a thousand excitements but had within them a thousand more enjoyments?

That’s what this world inspires us to do! It’s to have so much fun, enjoy so many things, expect so many more that we here never have anything to lose but only plenty to run out of time with which to partake. Yes, this world is our daily birthday cake at which we set at mouth level ready and waiting to blow out the candles eagerly expecting our millionth wish to be granted just as soon as we open our eyes back unto our lives.

This is how we know to live. It’s a life lost in love with all that is below all that is above. It’s a line given to giving men the ability to have as many opportunities as they may want to inspire us to want something else. It’s the training of our eyes to not see the hell we’re buying within the doubts we’re believing as to all these things that no life’s really needing but that every heart remains at best curious as to whether we might. Yes, within this life we spend all our time looking to mankind to show us the kind of life we’re supposed to live.

We literally do this for hours every single day within a new trend sweeping the globe and stealing our hope called ‘doom scrolling’.

It’s this pattern we keep repeating in which we just dissolve into hours spent digesting all that this world continues suggesting is something we need or ought to be. It’s a general opening of our mind through only our eyes trying always to find something to make our lives feel better than the best we were just recently sure they were. It’s always leaving that door open to maybe something more worth our hoping, a hope we hope to be holding before the new wears off and we miss our chance to be trending.

Yes, we’re a people of trends who tends to always try for only all that everyone else is trying for too.

And, well, in truth we’re running short on mansions and it’s no longer really all that impressive if you’ve got millions as others now have billions and one dude apparently trillions.

See what I’m saying?

It’s that we’re always behind in what are lives that are perpetually falling short of what remains the expectations of a mankind still completely excited by all this competition as is waged in wages won and fun had. We’re entirely intrigued by all the things that everyone else has, so much so that we hope to have at least some of them too someday soon. We are falling head over heels in love with all that is lost and that we’ll thus leave.

All because all we can seem still to see is that everyone else is winning what everyone else agrees is the life we all should be living.

And what do we see?

It’s the same stuff we’ve always seen as being considered signs of success or importance. It’s again mansions and the mammon with which they’re afforded. It’s popularity and it coming via platforms that push always certain performances and opinions to the top of the crop. It’s vanity continuing to inspire this insanity of such dangerous extremities that we have to keep coming up with new names for novel eating disorders. It’s people who have so many friends that all their friends are only followers they don’t really know.

It’s a world that seems only to know all of success and every accomplishment to be proven in such things as these.

Indeed, we live in a world in which you’re only considered to be living life if you’re rich and famous and always having fun, and thus a loser, a low life if you’re not. And what’s worse is that we’ve all agreed to go along with these jerks jerking us along what is a wide road that somehow broadens by the day. Truly, every single day there is in every single way some new progression or advancement that we’re all expected to know everything about, to care then about so very much that we can’t carry much with us of all we cared about just recent.

We’re a people lost in advancement assuming always there something else we should be doing because there’s always something more that we’ve been inspired to believe we need.

Do we?

Do we need more than we have? Do we need as much as we have already? Or is there maybe some kind of mundanity to our always following after a still clearly falling society?

Sadly we’ve all come to measure mundanity in those things that humanity considers boring. In fact we think that even boredom is beneath us as we’re instead all pretty much perfectly convinced that we should be always experiencing some newfound excitement that thus renders boredom impossible. And yet we’ve somehow managed to not realize how boring and dull and honestly just pointless our lives have become.

I’ll give you an example to my own shame, how about that?

I’ve spoken quite a lot of late about my nightly date with youtube. Even just writing that makes me feel like a dork. But that’s kind of the point. It’s that every single night I aim hours of my life at staring at a light that flows from my laptop playing all sorts of videos and virality that I have come to truly find interesting. Is it harmful to be interested in stuff? No. Is it questionable to spend so much time being interested by videos always pointing out the negativity swirling always around us?

Starting to think it might be.

And why?

Because I’m not happy. I know, who’d have thought that spending every night watching hours of videos online talking about political divides and conspiracies unfolding in real time would manage to find little peace or joy? That’s a mystery!

Except that it isn’t. In fact I’m becoming more and more convinced that it was all created on purpose. And too that said purpose was and remains to distract us. To steal as much of our interest as we become willing to give unto the way of commonality and confusion being insisted upon where we live. To slowly and kindly and excitedly show us to our place in the crowd where we’re meant to stand in awe of all that this world considers awesome and awe-inspiring.

To shove us into a corner of what is a life in which everyone does the same exact thing never once realizing that none of us are getting anywhere no matter how much stuff we keep getting.

Again, it’s all a distraction.

The mansions. The millions. The fans and friends and followers and our all of us thinking that those digital numbers that flash upon our public profiles somehow encompass some measure of who we are, why we’re here, even how well we’re doing at this thing called life. The lower the number the dumber the existence, am I right?

No, no I’m not.

It’s that we’ve all been caught inside what is the net in which we’re taught to tie our own hands and feet as we use them daily to seek only all this world considers successful. And, well, the world is always more than willing to help us along as many here are more than happy to spend hours every day following along with the accounts of those they find interesting or exciting or entertaining. And thus all we need to do to feel as if we’re doing this right is to find the right things to say and show.

And with this this world is too more than happy to help us know.

Every day we’re told everything that everyone needs to do if they’re to be considered someone worth paying attention to. And let’s be honest, we all love attention. We all love being noticed. We love it whenever someone comes alongside us and agrees with us in regard to whatever we say or do. We absolutely adore being praised and appreciated because, being prideful and arrogant, those things seem always to justify our already lofty and sadly still rising opinions of ourselves.

Problem is that we’re not really that important.

We’re not really that special. In fact, all of us are pretty much the same in God’s opinion. And this is because when He looks down from Heaven upon this mankind that He’s created, He sees not in measures such as millions or followers. No, He sees only those who are in Christ and those who aren’t. He sees those who are His compared against those who aren’t.

He sees those whose names are written in the Book of Life against those who are still working away at writing all these other books on life.

And the scary part is that down here we continue to blur that line.

Because we’re in truth a people who manage to find some way to make ourselves feel justified no matter what we’re trying for. So much so that even now there are those who stand upon pulpits telling their parishioners that God wants for them to be happy, to be successful, to be comfortable within this life. That God wants our lives to be here so full that we become examples of His endless blessings and provision. That we can only do this whenever we too are living in mansions and flying around in private jets.

Yes, there are men, and women too, who are in positions of power and influence and leadership within the visible church that claim that part of God’s work is to bless us so abundantly that the world around us will come to see inside of us and our lives reason for them too to seek to find some way to get on His good side.

A goodness proven in profit and popularity apparently.

And yet here in Hebrews we’ve been discussing some of those things that were experienced/endured by those who walked this road before we ever could. And, well, most of it doesn’t sound very good. I mean we’re talking about people who were mocked and flogged, stoned to death, sawn in two even. Yes, some were put in chains whilst others in prisons. Many have been despised, rejected, persecuted then by those who hated them. Some have even been crucified like their King was.

But somehow we’ve come upon this version of faith that inspires us to think that we can have our cake and eat it too.

That we can hold fast to the promise of Heaven and still partake of the leaven of those lost living lives the same. That we can both appreciate why He came, what He did, what that means but so too still find meaning in living these lives only for pleasing the flesh. That we can find joy inside our belief in what awaits beyond our death and yet still live our lives on this side of that line as if there’s still here plenty of life left to find that we’re supposed to love.

Why?

Because the world’s corrupted our understanding of life.

They’ve convinced us that down here we’re all supposed to find ourselves living it up. That they know best what everything from pleasure to success is, and that neither of them have anything to do with suffering, loneliness or loss. Yes, this world is filled with a majority who look upon the cross and see only a wasted life ended too soon.

I look at the cross as see a Savior who couldn’t leave this world fast enough and that because of what this world both become and still remains.

Which of us is right?

Only time will tell I suppose. But suppose that there is more to this than everything this world says matters most. Suppose there are things that mean more than our always wanting more. Suppose that this world looking at our lives and seeing something that they consider pleasing or impressive might be more reason to stress and worry than we’d ever imagine.

After all, this world has proven time and again what they think of true believers.

Shouldn’t we then be at least slightly worried if they like or approve of whatever it is that we say or do?

See, the issue is that we’ve too come to measure success in the very same ways as the world. This is why mega churches exist and their pastors(?) have private jets. It’s because we’ve become so worldly in all of our thinking that even our understanding of faith has our hearts and eyes fixed on filling seats and making fans. We do so many things to make our faith seem exciting, enjoyable, interesting in hopes of winning some to the Lord.

But in doing so we’ve put the Lord on the backburner and turned our attention to trying to look so close to what this world knows and loves that we just might trick them into coming to a concert.

All while those who’ve gone home before us look down and watch us missing the point entirely.

And that because we’ve come to measure our worth via the wants and ways of this world. Are we worthy of belonging? Are we doing enough to win their time and attention? Have we come up with enough ways to earn their praise and appreciation?

Friends, it’s all backwards. All of that is only our focusing on the world.

And that’s simply not what we’re here to do.

Instead we’re here to focus on following Christ and doing, saying all that He gives us to. But in truth all that He gives us to say and do cannot be said or done if all we worry about is whether or not we’re worthy of what the world is willing to offer or only continues to refuse. We cannot serve both God and man! And yet we spend all our lives focused on following man, pleasing man, impressing man trying to gain their attention so that, in the end, we might manage to drop a few hints as to all of our hopes.

All because we think that we’re supposed to be worthy of them.

Friends, we should understand that this world isn’t worthy of us!

And I know that that sounds more than a little boastful and proud, but it isn’t. If anything it’s just a mind that’s over trying to please people and earn their praise or appreciation. I’m tired of trying to live my life in step with how the world tells us we should. I’m sick of the expectations!

Honestly, as kids we were all handed our lives before we even started living them!

Start school at five. Drive at 16. Graduate high school at 18. Finally experience real freedom at 21. Better have at least one kid by 25. Career best underway by the time you make it 28. 30’s and 40’s are the years spent growing the career and the number of kids we have. Keep on doing that until you’re 65 and get to retire from an entire life spent within the system that man has made. Hopefully make it to 80 or 90 so that you can have had enough good years that you can look back on what you consider to be a good life.

But only if you managed to leave behind the mansions and millions to dozens of kids and even more grandchildren.

And no, I’m not saying that none of those things matter. Not saying that none of them are special or important.

I’m just asking how much of all these expectations that we continue to agree to go along with are as worthy of our time and attention as the amount of the both that we give them?

Friends, my point is that we’ve maybe gotten our priorities a little mixed up. And I say that because we, again, sure seem to spend an awful lot of time looking around and trying to mimic what this world calls a life. We’ve all spent already so much time and energy trying to find and feel all that this world says we should. All of it trying to make it seem like we’re doing well down here.

All because we think that doing well down here is measured only in financial success and social influence and material wealth.

What if it isn’t?

Because, if it was, then those who, as spoken of here, lived in caves and holes in the ground, their lives then meant nothing.

And yet this verse says that the world wasn’t worthy of them!

Could that be because they didn’t waste their lives trying to prove themselves worthy of what this world wanted them to be? That they perhaps instead gave everything they had to living a life worthy of hearing Him say “Well done”?

Indeed, who do we want to think we’ve done well? The world around us that’s going to hell or He who came to save us from the same?

Friends, this world sells us one version of life and, yeah, most here continue to buy it clearly then believing it to be what’s best for them. We don’t surely agree with the masses, do we?

My point is that we’ve all spent our lives trying to prove our lives worthy of something. All I’m saying is that maybe it’s time for us to stop and reconsider what that is and from whom we seek it.

Make no mistake, this world will give us all all the praise and applause our pride will always enjoy. But maybe there’s more to this ride than hearing a fallen people saying we’re doing good.

Maybe doing good is something only done whenever we do nothing of what this world says we should? For again, the Bible touts those who suffered as being those of whom this world wasn’t worthy. Perhaps then there’s more worth in suffering for something than there is in buying everything this world continues to sell about a life lived well.

A little food for thought if nothing else.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold