Day 4190 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Isaiah 2:22 NIV

A path personal.

Or at least that’s what I believe this faith is supposed to be. For indeed, what else might it be if it’s to be anything that means anything to anyone seeing as how everyone is something different, someone different from everyone else? I mean, while we may all have quite a few shared interests or common goals or even an appreciation for certain cultural pursuits, even these things are still likely to be seen or heard or considered in slightly different ways by all who take part in them or allow them a part in them.

Because we’re all unique people who’ve our own personal blend of understandings and confusions, delights and delusions through which all that we see and do and hear and think must always wobble and weave.

And yet anymore we spend so much time sectioning ourselves off into what are all these little groups to whom or amongst whom we enjoy feeling as if we belong. It’s something we do in regard to everything from identity politics to our national pastimes such as baseball and whether you think it’s better to eat hot dogs or bratwurst at the game. We all have all these opinions about everything and while that can be a good thing as discernment is an often under-appreciated aspect of our existence, the problem with it is that our every opinion is so personal that we seek out friendship with only those who share it.

To the point in which anymore all people are is only considered from whatever team they cheer for or whoever they cast their support behind during the last election.

Why?

Because these are the things that people tell us are important. And they tell us that they’re important because they’ve become convinced of the same by they who are/were but other humans who taught them to think they mattered because they were convinced they do by someone else. It’s nothing but this giant chain in which we’re all but links linking ourselves together according to our many likes and more dislikes, all of which are usually at least somewhat inspired by those around us.

Indeed, we’ve gotten to the point in which we all look so often to people to help us learn how to be a person that we as a person are likely nothing but a mere reflection of the people to whom we look and from whom we learn and amongst whom we walk and with whom we talk and against whom we fight and for whom we don’t really do anything other than offering them our every opinion in what remains our highest hope of finding someone else to agree with things as we see them.

That’s really all this life’s come to become. It’s all just one big interview in which we bounce from one human to the next trying to figure out who we can get along with and who all we should stay away from.

But, as harsh as it might sound, I for one tend to believe that we should probably just stay at least fairly disconnected from everyone.

Why?

Because none of us really have any idea what we’re doing. Now sure, some are closer than others to figuring things out. But even that is anymore something that’s become so lost in semantical thought that even something such as success is often seen as being measured in different ways. Some believe that success is measured in money, others in power, still others in those rare people who just seem to be happy somehow without all that much of either of the above.

But the point is that we as a people have so learned to embrace this opportunity we have to have friends or relationships or church-group softball teams that much of life has become about trying to find where it is that we might fit and who we seem to fit best around.

Thus leaving life devolved into our once again resorting to what are but schoolyard playground tactics in which we pick the biggest and meanest to be on our side of whatever game it is that we’ve all agreed to play.

My question is why we all continue to play as if life’s a game and how it is that we’re all supposed to adhere to the same set of rules whenever everyone else seems to be playing Four-Square while some of us are over here getting lined up for some good old-fashioned full-contact Red-Rover.

Usually just waiting for Mr. Rover to send pretty much anyone over because our greatest fear seems to have become our being left alone.

After all, if nobody else is around us then to whom are we to share our thoughts and interests and receive from them the approval and acceptance upon which our souls have learned to run?

No, being alone is widely considered pretty much absolutely no fun because, well, it’s just us. It’s just our thoughts. It’s just our worries. It’s just our wonderings as to what this life is and why we have one and whether or not whatever it is that we’re doing with it is what we’re supposed to be doing with it and how much longer we might or might not have left to better figure it out than all of our fears and failures seem to say we have thus far.

Yeah, it can get pretty dark whenever you’re left alone with just you and God for a minute.

Which is why so many try so hard to avoid it.

And that usually by filling their time and mind with the idea of being around people and paying attention to what all they’re doing and listening intently to all they’re saying and seeking from within all said watching and hearing something of some betterment that we can add unto our lives. That’s really the untold bottom line of all we seem anymore all that interested to find within all those we’ve gathered around ourselves.

We just quietly expect everyone to help us somehow whether it be the giving us of things or the helping us with things or the teaching us how to do the things that they themselves have done in order to have become those to whom we’ve come seeking from them this whatever it is that we want from them.

For we’ll do nothing if there’s not something in it for us.

But then the question quickly becomes what it is that we expect another human to do for us, to give to us.

After all, we’ve all but breath in our lungs, confusions in our minds, deception in our hearts, foolishness in our plans, misunderstandings hiding in our understandings and a willingness to usually only stand wherever the crowd is and for whatever it is that they’re yelling about. In short we’re sheep and if this you don’t really believe just pay attention any time you pull up to a drive-thru line and notice that there’s six cars in one lane and only one in the second.

We are truly a creature of herd-based mentality. And, as I mentioned yesterday, sure, there is some reason or sense or perhaps even rationality to that. For after all, I think it safe to say that all of us have basically an affinity for at least a few of the same things. Things like being alive and thus trying to avoid those things which might cause us to die (other than sin, no, we still really like that one for whatever reason), or eating food as it tastes good and gives us a break from all the mundane stuff we do that we all don’t really like to like work on homework or taking the trash out.

We all have quite a few reasonable pursuits or priorities that we all thus share.

But as to how or why we think that means that it’s only on people that we should lean, I’ve no idea. For while humans may have some reasonable things they do like trying not to die, I think it fair to say we’ve far about us that’s vastly more unreasonable than anything.

And I say this as something of a more personal indictment than anything.

And that’s because God’s daily helping me to become more and more aware of all my little confusions and struggles and other sadly generalized suckage in regard to my ability to live a life and the life I’ve thus come to live. And indeed, I’ve got plenty that He’s got me working on!

But therein awaits another issue. And that is, not to be mean, but it honestly doesn’t really seem as if everyone is working on their things. In fact anymore it appears as if most folks are just kind of retiring from trying to improve or learn or grow. Most have just sort of settled wherever they stand and are really only spreading out in their chosen spot.

The spreading probably only because they’re all still looking for friends to come alongside them and tell them all about how awesome they are or brave they seem or courageous they’ve become to become willing to shave half their head and tattoo a centipede crawling down their face.

And the sad reality is that there are those out there who will really tell someone that doing stuff like that is a good idea!

Help me understand why it is then that we think we should continue to looking to people.

Friends, look at people!

I’m not trying to cut anyone down but honestly, going to simply get some groceries anymore feels like going trick or treating. Only the costumes seem really inappropriate, nobody’s carrying any pumpkin buckets and there’s no candy except that which they ask you to buy.

It’s terrifying out there anymore!

And yet so many continue to live as if there are those, and some apparently believe more than plenty of them, who are out there that we should look to or learn from or lean on.

Why?

Because we’ve again become so afraid of being alone that we’ve had to agree to just go along with whatever it is that the world’s got going on all so that we can find someone else, and hopefully many of them, to go along with us wherever it is that we’re going.

But that’s perhaps the biggest problem.

It’s that so long as we look to people to lead the way, the only places we can ever go are only those to which people have decided to go. So long as we agree to learn only those things that those around us want for us to know, all we can then hope to know is only whatever it is that another thinks they do.

And, again, there are those who really do think it a good idea to wear next to nothing to go and buy some frozen pizzas and too those who consider it brave to be all of who you are.

In public.

Yeah, we’re not really hiding anything in the closet anymore.

And that only makes it all that much easier to wonder as to why it is that we’re so willing to trust in people.

Again, look around!

And while what we see around us in terms of how those around us dress and act and talk and seem then to think is truly terrifying indeed, what’s perhaps even scarier is that we’ve allowed that willingness to just blindly go along with anything and everything into the church and our understanding of faith. Truly, I sadly have no doubts in my saying that there are those who only know the parts of the Bible that their preacher talks about on Sunday morning. And that’s all well and good as those who are preachers and pastors are those tasked with teaching the Scriptures and helping those in their care to grow in the truth given us in there.

But we also know of those who’ve used such positions and such power and such platforms for things that are pretty far away from the calling of Christ and the cross.

Still looking for that part of the Word where it says that those who are here to share the Word need a private jet or multi-million dollar mansion to do so.

Is that judging?

Yeah, I guess it is.

And, well, that’s actually what the Bible tells us to do. To hold accountable those in the church, which, again, isn’t talking about the building but rather the body. We are all here to hold one another accountable to the Word, to the Truth, to the Life and the way in which the Way said we’re supposed to live it.

Why?

Because if we see something that seems wrong and we don’t do anything about it, we thus agree to only leave another walking in sin and thus headed toward death and, well, the Word says that not only shall they die for their sins but that so too shall their blood be on our hands.

Yeah, not quite so funny now, is it?

Problem is that this world’s convinced us all to approach everything as if it’s all some game in which the rules are made up as we go along.

No friends, He gave us the rules long ago.

And yet somehow there are still plenty of those who neither know them nor seem to live as if they do even if they say they do.

Indeed, Isaiah 29:13:

“The Lord says: ‘These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.’”

There it is again, merely human. “Stop trusting in mere humans.” Mere. Merely. Mere is a word used to emphasize how small or insignificant someone or something is. It’s saying that something is only whatever it is and cannot be anything more. Thus mere humans are only human and can be nothing more than human. And while being human is a great gift as God’s given us all the ability to be one, we’ve all chosen to become one that has increasingly little resemblance to those He created us to be.

How do I know?

Because Jesus had to come and die on a sinner’s cross just to open our eyes to how horribly we’ve all chosen, yes, chosen to live our lives!

Again, look around!

Anymore trying to find something decent to see or listening for something uplifting to hear, it’s like trying to find a unicorn holding a needle in a haystack on the island of Atlantis.

Yeah, plenty of people believe that Atlantis was a real place, I myself wouldn’t doubt it. But nobody’s yet to have found it and I don’t know that they were big hay producers and I’m willing to bet that unicorns weren’t there either.

And sadly nor is anything righteous or reasonable or really even simply decent found around here anymore. Rather everything is either imploding or decaying or simply fading in importance amongst those who apparently find it more important to stare at their phones than pay attention in traffic or have a conversation with the cashier at McDonald’s.

Oh yeah, people have even decided that it’s a worthy idea to try to get rid of that too as some restaurants are going to machine ordering so that you don’t have to talk to people.

I’m telling you friends, the further ahead we get in terms of technology and such, the further behind we fall.

And the issue is that the vast majority of people are falling for it.

Kind of making it easy to see the possibility of what the Bible says coming true in that the vast majority will fall away and get the mark and leave the hope of Heaven still on the table simply because they’ll want to be able to live a life that fits still inside this one place we all are.

And, again, perhaps to that there is some sense as, yeah, we all do have a life here.

Question is what are we doing with it and, seeing what others are so clearly doing with theirs, why we would continue to agree to look to those around us to help us figure out what we’re supposed to do and how to do it better.

Friends, if you haven’t noticed yet, ‘better’ isn’t really something that all that many seem all that interested in anymore.

Just calling it as I sees it.

Is that rude? Is it arrogant? Call it whatever you want. My point is that people give us far more reasons to not trust them than they give us to trust them. And that’s simply because we’re all flawed. We’ve all failed. We’ve all fallen short of the glory of God and sought our glory instead.

Issue being that our glory isn’t a thing.

Reality is that most people are still looking for it anyway.

How much longer shall we look to those living sinful and selfish lives to inspire us to live the kind of life God in Christ calls us to live? How much more shall we learn from those who refuse to show forth any knowledge, let alone understanding, of the idea and necessity of salvation? How much more do we need to hear to know that this world has far more of those who outright deny the truth than those who are actually trying to humble themselves to live in accordance to it?

When will we understand that our faith is meant to be a personal relationship that thus requires us to take an active role in it as is done in our being the ones reading the Word, praying our own prayers, walking our own narrowing line, laying down our own life?

None of that is anything you find anymore in this world. Rather everyone here is only doing whatever it is that someone else is doing or that someone else taught them how to do. And sure, that should work because we should be able to rely on one another to seek the best of everyone.

But if we can look around at the state of society and still think it safe to put our trust in people, well, I wish us luck because I just don’t see how that’s possible.

Maybe I’m just a jerk. And if so that’s fine. Why? Because I’d rather stand with Christ and be judged by the world than to stand with the world and be there condemned by Christ.

Thankfully it’s all been made just so simple as there being but those two sides.

Problem is that people still make it seem safe and normal and expected for us to stand beside them.

And as those who care and love and want to help everyone we can, we’ll perhaps always feel as if we should.

But friends, we cannot afford to remain of this world anymore. For God’s told us what awaits this place and all those who live according to the commonalities settled for culturally within.

One day life here as we all know it will end.

Why wager whatever it is that may or may not come next on placing our trust in those who, more likely than not, only believe that this life as we’ve known it is the only life there is for us to know?

Maybe they’re right.

What if they’re not?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold