Day 4248 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jeremiah 8:12 NIV

Shameless

I’ll never again be able to look around and comprehend the seemingly widespread ability to see so many of the things that are happening in this world, to this world and consider them acceptable. I just can’t. Rather anymore it feels as if a growing number of sights and sounds seen and heard all around are so incredibly alarming, concerning, confusing, saddening and yeah, just plain scary. What we see happening is a world collapsing as sin rises to new heights all the time, every single day in fact.

What we don’t see is that anyone really seems to see any issue with it going this way.

Instead it appears as if most folks are perfectly fine with how things are unfolding. So many seem entirely content with the content of our current confusions and delusions and disasters and denials. Indeed, we’ve so sought to perfect our ability to deny just about anything, even things taking place right before our very eyes, that we’ve made doing so our natural reaction to basically everything. There truly seems to be nothing that we can’t manage to turn a blind eye toward.

Assuming constantly that if we simply strive to retain our ability to claim we’re blind to what we know we’re not then perhaps we’re not responsible for our failing to uphold our responsibility to do something about it. That if we just ignore it all hard enough that maybe it’ll all just agree to not be there. That perhaps we can become so negligent in our living of life and the call to do so righteously, reasonably, rationally that maybe our negligence will come to be seen as normality.

Something found commendable maybe.

Yes, we are living this version of life, I’ll not call it a life anymore as I simply can’t lie and say that what I see is much if anything of anything that should ever be seen as most days I see mostly only death as is displayed in the deepening darkness of the decay around us, but it’s this spin on an existence in which it’s vastly clear that the vast majority of those who are here are already falling.

Willingly.

We’re becoming a people who continue moving the bar lower and lower to meet our similarly shrinking standards in what’s become a life in which we pretty much have none anymore. We’re losing our standards, our expectations, our examples then of what better things we can be doing and thus should be doing with this little time we’ve remaining. We are actively giving away our every chance to make a positive impact in the lives of those around us.

All because it seems as though we’re so perfectly content with who we are and what we’re becoming that we likewise don’t care that everyone else is clearly quitting either.

Rather we find some sense of sordid solace in the realization that, hey, if we all just give up together then none of us have to feel bad about giving up. Instead the process will become the norm. And indeed, quitting has become our standard. We’ve so utterly relaxed our appreciation of all things from modesty to morality that now our society truly does seem to have no shame.

Which, granted, I can see why we’d want it this way as, yeah, shame isn’t a fun feeling to feel. In fact shame sucks! Being ashamed is one of the most humiliating feelings that anyone can feel. And that’s because it exists inside this unrelenting realization of the better we should have done, the better we could have been alongside a glaring discrepancy measured between said better and whatever lesser we’ve then settled for.

But that’s the point of it.

It’s all a settling. It’s stopping short and there refusing to keep going. It’s us deciding how far we’re willing to go, how hard we’re willing to try, what all we’re willing to do and what more we’d really not care to. And while all of that can itself be a very good things should it be used against such things as sin and selfishness and laziness, refusing then to let those things come to define us but rather stopping short of their falling short and there refusing to keep going in their wrong directions, truth is that’s simply not how we use them.

Instead we use such mindsets only in regard to righteousness and responsibility and, these days, even reason.

Truly, as a people we’re apparently reaching the point in which good, old fashioned rationality is being replaced by a swelling irreverence for not only God, as has been common for, well, ever, but in fact even anything remotely good. We’re proving daily that we’re more than happy to settle for good enough, an ideal so personal that we then retain the right to let ourselves decide whatever our good enough is.

A line that’s also being moved all the time and that not toward the better.

No, rather our every good enough, as is again measured by us and thus subject to all of our laziness and lunacy and penchant for looking lustfully at those lives which seem to always be going easy, has become all but insistent upon finding just that.

We just want what’s easy.

And, well, what can ever be easier than doing nothing?

What can ever prove easier than our trying to become nothing more than whatever we already are? What can ever prove less complicated, less cumbersome, less confusing and thus less prone to finding us all losing this amazing ability to be entirely comfortable in these pits of filth and foulness that we call lives than just convincing ourselves that everything here is fine?

Friends, what here is fine?

Sure, these days plenty here is affirmed. In fact we love that idea to death! We absolutely adore the idea of just finding those people who will agree with everything we’re doing, tell us how brave we are to be doing it and may well themselves join us in the doing of it too. For again, if we all give up together then, well, we neither have to feel so bad about quitting on the better we could be and, yeah, we’ll probably make plenty of friends along the way who too agree to do as little as they can get by with.

But that’s the overall underlying problem, isn’t it?

It’s that we’re all convinced that we can get by with it. That everything we do is okay to be done. That, as many seem to clearly consider considering the things they’re doing and how morally decrepit they so clearly are, God either doesn’t really care all that much about much of the stuff we do or that He’s not there at all and thus can’t care at all.

Indeed, I look around at a world and see so many things that are being done that can only be done by a people who are all but convinced that both God doesn’t exist, morality is then a theory at best, truth is something we can each make up as we go along toward the nowhere better that we’re heading as a people, and thus just keep doing an increasing amount of the darkness around us themselves.

For why not?

Everybody else is doing and they’re clearly having a ball all the while!

Live it up, right?

Don’t you understand the process of falling? That it’s something done from a height? That then the higher we get on this life, in this life the further the fall? And don’t we yet understand the overall end to a fall? The higher the height means the further the fall and that means the harder the hit.

And we’re not falling into sand my friends.

We’re falling into the hands of the Everlasting King whose very Word is as unmoving as He is.

We’re building ourselves up as the only ones in existence who’ve any right to define how best to spend or enjoy our existence and in this to such a height that when comes the fall, Humpty Dumpty will look on us with pity as we’ll be smashed into so many pieces that not even all of God’s patience can put us together again.

Why?

Because He’s given us these entire lives to get it into our minds that He is God and we are not and thus we are nothing but here at His mercy and that to find in us a desperate hurry to find the hope that He holds out for us.

And yet rather than seeking for His hope, His mercy, His kindness, seeking then for only His glory as is deserved in the fact that He gives them all so freely and so fully, we’re instead down here failing and that at even trying to be anything any better than whatever this is we’ve come to become.

Because we don’t care anymore!

Nobody cares. Just do whatever you want. Do whatever makes you feel good. Shoot, don’t even hide it if you don’t feel you need to. In fact, post about it. Share it everywhere you can! You know what, take it to the streets even! Yes, let’s have parades for pride and public drag shows for kids, that’ll be fun!

We’re all about fun. Bright colors and flashing lights and such endless noise and nonsense, all of it chosen to keep us distracted so perfectly, so completely, so constantly from the fact that we’re doing nothing and quickly becoming the same.

Sure, we’re having fun. We’re winning at life!

But we’re going to lose our lives because of it. And no, not because God’s against us having fun. He literally gave us the ability to experience enjoyment! But friends, He didn’t create us to be able to enjoy such filth as we do these days. Honestly, our whole entertainment industry is built on lies and lust and violence and drugs, and that not just seen on the screen or sung about in the songs! No, anymore more and more continues to come out about these famous people doing some absolutely horrendous things and that to either get their fame or to use it to exploit those who look up to them, those who want to be like them.

And what do we do about it?

We line up to buy their newest cd and preorder our tickets for their upcoming movie.

We don’t care.

Just entertain us. Keep us distracted from the fact that our own lives are falling to pieces. Help us to keep on ignoring the blatantly obvious truth that we’re doing nothing and becoming only the same.

All because we’ve all just quit and agreed that where we are, who we are, it’s all as good as it gets.

Is this really the best we can be? Is the world we see the hope we had? More violence than ever, hatred everywhere, cursing our new national language, dressing completely inappropriately all but an olympic sport?

We don’t see it that way though, do we?

I’m starting to wonder if we see anything at all anymore. Because, well, if we did I’m not sure how we’d be able to keep settling for what we do see, only ever changing for what seems to be the worst. And too, no, I’m not saying that the past was the best things could have been either. We’ve been messing up since the literal beginning of time. But aren’t we getting the least bit tired of it yet?

I know I am. Like I said, I hate feeling shame. I try all I can and that every single day to do whatever it takes to avoid feeling that way. But you know what, I still do. And guess what:

I’m thankful for it!

I’m thankful that He’s helping me still to realize, recognize those parts and places of my life that need some work, some change, some death. Yes, I am ecstatic at the opportunity to lose things, to sell things, to change things. Why? Because I know that one day I’m gonna die and that when I do I’m going to fall face-first on the floor just outside of Heaven’s gates where I’ll await the verdict of my eternity.

And I know that I already don’t deserve to be welcomed into the experiencing of all the joy and peace and love found only within.

But I love the hope that He might really see inside of me something worth saving. And because I have that hope I will continue to do whatever it takes, whatever little I can to make it clear that I want to be there no matter how narrow or painful or humiliating the path in may be.

Because I believe that all things will be changed. The first will be last, the last then first. The dead will rise and those risen shall fall. Those who exalted themselves will be humbled while the humble will be exalted.

And that by Him.

The One we’ve forgotten. The One we’ve forsaken. The One we’ve set to the side so that we can go on living our lives doing whatever we want to do as if He’s, at best, only there to clean up the mess by hopping back up on that cross.

We treat the concept of salvation with such disdain, denial, debate that it’s no wonder the darkness around us continues to grow. Anymore all we see down here is a show that seems only to say that we still don’t get it and have no plans to even try.

Just live and let die however anyone may care to.

Live your best life and make sure it’s as fun as you can make it.

Who cares about the rest?

God does my friends.

God does.

And that’s why He’s told us that He’s coming back. It’s because He’s had enough of all this world’s become and too what we’ve come to become because of it being so allowed to exist as our example, as our ideal, as our reward. He is our example. Christ’s example is our ideal. And His resurrection is our reward.

But only if we join Him in dying to this world and all the sin we’ve all lived in and most will continue living in before He gets back.

But how hard it is for us to do that when we continue to agree with everyone else who continues to live as if nothing matters other than our having fun and feeling good. And sure, those things are enjoyable and thus it’s perfectly easy to see why so many continue chasing them.

Let us not forget though that everything will be changed, utterly replaced with its counterpart.

Thus pleasure and fun and satisfaction found here will be replaced with, well, weeping and gnashing of teeth. And too, sorrow and shame and the narrowness they inspire unto a life will too be replaced by joy and peace and the endlessness of Heaven and our chance to finally experience only all that He is.

We shouldn’t want to miss that, but friends, the fact that shame is so clearly missing around here promises that most will.

Why?

Because shame exists to inspire us to change our ways. And so then if we don’t feel shame, then neither will anything change. Instead we’ll just remain nothing but sinners willfully falling short of the glory of God.

Maybe that’s good enough.

But that Christ embraced the shame that we ignored on that cross we’ve likewise denied, seems to say that it isn’t.

No, my faith tells me that He didn’t die for nothing. And thus it asks that I stop living for the same.

And one day there will be nothing left of this place once humanity’s lack of shame has finished society’s fall. So let us be careful how we live and what we seek to feel while we do. For while shame may not be fun to experience, the point of this experience was never to have fun. It was to find faith and that in only the Son.

Again, something all but impossible to do whenever we determine to remain a people without shame and thus without any ability to realize our need of salvation.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold