Day 4272 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Jude 1:11 NIV

The sins of our fathers

As kids we’re said to have brains that are like sponges, soaking always those things we see and hear and feel and find. And it’s this plasticity that allows our minds to grow into the various curiosities and assurances and confusions that we eventually develop into as adults. It opens us up to the measuring of all the stuff that we see and hear and feel and find and the trying to determine what to repeat in our own lives. And this ability was given us with what was surely intended the understanding that those from whom we’d learn would, as the Bible suggests, start us off in the way we should go.

But no.

No, rather be it as children who are still violently susceptible to the suggestions given them or even as grown adult women and men we’re all at the mercy of a world always in a hurry to repeat only those things that we see others do, all of us are rather began each day unto the lost way of a world with no love for God remaining. Yet while this tendency toward trusting in man should in many ways prove mostly harmless if not helpful considering as how we all claim we’re down here looking to live our best lives, the problem we continue to find is that what many consider best is only that which will incur His wrath.

And yet they always paint it up so pretty and make it seem so fun that it eventually becomes popular as, again, everyone is just trying their best to find what’s best of this place in which good is somehow increasingly scarce.

And as those who, like kids, are trying to bob and weave our way through this world and all of its weirdness and woes, we often find ourselves simply falling in line stumbling behind those who claim they know where to go to find what is that best life that we’re all still looking for. And yet we never seem to get any closer but rather that closure seems instead to always evade as the days all join together and waste away within our doing still mostly only as all have done.

For there is still nothing new under the sun.

Rather still man rebels. Still man rejects. Still man argues and tightens that rope around their necks. Still we keep on writing those checks that our souls can’t cash as God doesn’t deal in money but to us it’s the honey that surely makes this place seem the promised land. And indeed, many do live as if it truly is. So many are running around heaping up wealth and happiness and our every human estimation as to what those things really are without ever stopping to actually take stock of the stock we’re storing nor where nor why.

It’s just what everyone else is doing and surely everyone else can’t be wrong, right?

But the issue is that we’ve gotten so good at making our own wrongs seem right that again the very worst in life is anymore passed off as the best there is. And we don’t ask any questions because both those who are kind enough to lead us into their own confusions and delusions don’t want us to ask any questions because they know they don’t have the answers and, well, we know we’re better off not knowing what we can’t then be held responsible for.

Because deep down we all agree that with more knowledge comes more grief because, as with the fruit from that tree, sometimes the more you know proves only more responsibility.

And we’re clearly a people who aren’t big fans of that!

Yet somehow we just keep on in our seeking to know more, to have more, to see more, be more, and that of only whatever is here where most of those around us continue to say that the very best of life is. Indeed, every single day you’re sure to see or hear someone claim that they’re living their best life. And thanks to such lies as social media and Photoshop, it sure looks to the lazy eye to be a really good life. Maybe even one that we should copy, they then who are living it those whom we should follow.

Which oddly enough just so happens to be one of the most well-known aspects of social media.

We’re a world of fans and followers, each of us hitching daily our wagons to those whose stated job is to be an influencer. And thus all of us are daily being willingly influenced by tens, hundreds, thousands of thoughts and the actors which claim to have them. And indeed, you could point to the hypocrisy not at all hidden in that statement as I too do what I do via social media where within these posts I share my thoughts on these verses and passages given us within the Word of God.

And I too do this daily hoping that it helps somebody and that by bringing them some good in what is again a world in which such is seriously hard to find.

But I believe there’s a difference in direction and thus hopefully destination as my aim is not to encourage people to remain like this world but rather to realize this world for what it is. And that’s because what this world is is not the place where a best life can be lived. This isn’t where we should be so accustomed to seeking our rewards via fun and friends. This place is not the place where we should put down all of these roots into all that is ruthless and ruined.

Rather this place is still the place from which He’s called us to come, to flee, to all but gather all of our things, carry them out back, douse them in gas, strike the match and walk away.

“Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.”

Said from the same Lord who called us all explicitly to take up our crosses and follow Him endlessly toward what He also said was going to be the end of literally everything we’ve any of us ever known. Because He told us that this world was passing away and too that He wants for none of us to so perish as it will thanks to the sin committed within and upon but that rather His delight is for our each to find the reward that is repentance that seeks to free us from the way of life we’ve been handed to live by those who lost theirs before we have.

And yet we just continue instead to repeat all their bad, all their wicked, all their wrong.

Why?

Because it’s easier to emulate what you can physically witness than it is to do what you don’t see anybody else trying.

And, just to take an example from everyday life that I then trust all of us will understand, look at all the tattoos that have come to cover just about everyone. Now this isn’t a post seeking to debate the whole marking of the body and whether or not that’s right or wrong. This is just an example I’m offering as to the ease of things becoming pervasive throughout a people.

When I was younger you didn’t see all that many tattoos. They were mostly reserved for bikers and veterans and gangsters who emblazoned themselves with the logos or motifs of whatever chapter or group or club that they belonged to. It was a sight seen upon tough, grizzled men who, let’s be honest, looked like they may have gotten them either in prison or within what was the way of life that may have led them to hearing those gates clang shut.

But nowadays they’re everywhere. It anymore feels like if you happen upon seeing someone without a tattoo you’ve basically seen Bigfoot riding a unicorn as the Loch Ness monster swims alongside. It’s such a rarity to see anybody without some kind of ink, usually more than you’d think. And indeed, this cultural tendency toward getting tattoos has become entirely pervasive to the point in which, rather than standing out because you have one, now you only stand out if you don’t.

And there are tons of other examples that point to the same penchant we have for allowing culture to dictate our choices. Sort of like those few mentioned here. For indeed, many are those who hate others because they see the good in others that they don’t see in themselves just like Cain did Abel. And there are plenty who are more than happy to twist their story and to do so seeking only the glory (and gain) of pleasing people even if they know the will of God, seeking always to find a way around it so as to pretend they’re serving God whilst still making people happy.

Prosperity gospel anybody?

And indeed, there are too those, and increasingly many of them, who find amazing success in managing to gather together a group of followers who are themselves more than happy to join hands in rebellion against literally anything and pretty much everybody who isn’t doing what they want them to do. Such as Korah did on that day in which he led a rebellion against Moses and Aaron because his contention was that “everyone in the assembly is holy” and thus Moses and Aaron had no real reason to be those leading the people but should rather get out of the way and let everyone do whatever they wanted to.

That one ought to hit home!

Because it’s the same story we’re told still today. That these lives are our own and thus we should do with them whatever we please because we’re all God’s children and He just wants us to be happy even though our understanding of happiness continues heaping up sin to the heavens.

And we repeat these lies and emulate those who spread them because they’re popular, they’re powerful, they’re in many ways profitable. They gain us fans and followers who we, as the lonely people we always are, easily agree to see as our friends and families. But friends, friendship with the world is still enmity against God!

And He’s not changing His mind on that.

But alas it often seems as if neither are we. Rather still we gather together in our many rebellions against Him and, more often, one another. Still we bend and twist Scripture seeking to avoid those parts and contexts that we know most don’t want to hear about. Still we sell faith for money to those who fill the seats and hopefully put a little extra in the plate that’s passed around thanks to how good we made them feel about themselves.

Still we utterly despise those who are better than us, not because they’re better but simply because we’re bitter that we’ve given up on being better.

And yeah, many are resorting to killing those they don’t like because in their life they’ve become so dark that any light must be extinguished.

That is the way of our world. Those are the sins of our fathers. Those are the patterns we’ve learned to repeat, the choices we ourselves have been taught to choose. All of us are down here with but one life to lose and yet all of us continue on living as if we’ll never lose anything.

Because we live in a world rife with gain and plenty, milk and honey bought with money rather than sought from God.

Why?

Because man doesn’t want God but rather wishes to be gods.

And as much as His Word will never change, nor will that obvious fact of a fallen and still falling man. Rather people will continue falling in love with any lie that makes them feel good about the way they’re living their life because we all know change is hard and none of us want to do it then. They’ll keep falling in line following forever behind those who agree to take the lead and shoulder the risk because none of us want to do that either. They’ll keep allowing drive-thrus to make their dinner and TV to sell the drugs that will make them thinner.

Because it’s easy. It’s normal. It’s successful as far as we can see.

And those are all the things that everyone wants in life. We want life to be easy, for us to seem normal, for our lives to be successful in regard to everything we seek to have or be or do. We want people to like us. We want the world to accept us. We want the masses to acknowledge us and follow us and offer us the validation that comes in such things as likes and followers.

But friends we’re children! We’re infants being daily tossed about by every wind of worry and want this world blows around us. We’re ships lost at the sea that is our lost society still assuming that just because it’s something that everyone else is doing we should just do it too.

We shouldn’t because God’s not a God of quantity or popularity or prosperity but rather the One who calls us to be holy, to be a light in this darkening world, to be His people who do His good.

But that’s so hard for us to do because it’ll simply never be popular. It will never be easy to be His while we’re here. Rather being His people, His children, His followers will find us labeled as failures and fools and freaks. It will find us refused and rejected in the streets, maybe even in our own homes. It will find us perhaps even rushed unto becoming a pile of bones when this world continues to prove that it hates us for having to see in us the good it refuses to try and become.

And as the heat ramps up and the pressure to conform and fit in gets only heavier and the ease and success and enjoyment of life that we see literally so many daily enjoying continues to make it seem as if they know of a better way to live this life as theirs surely seems easier and safer and far more successful than our own, we’ll find ourselves wondering if maybe we should just give up, walk away from the faith, let down these crosses we’ve been carrying and experience again the lives we see everyone else living out there on the wide open.

And indeed, the Bible says many will.

But too that those who persevere to the end will be saved.

Look, I know that this place will continue selling a version of life that looks real nice and probably feels quite the same. And yeah, many will continue falling for the deception because all of us want an easier life, a life in which we have more fun and make more friends. And so yes, it will remain commonplace for most to look unto this place to tell them what to do, who to be, what not to believe.

But friends, such following of people will only ever get us wherever those people are going.

Scripture tells us that many are those will leave this world unto eternal condemnation and the endless suffering they’ve saved up while they enjoyed their rewards here at the cost of never once even accidentally acknowledging God.

Thus the odds aren’t good that we can manage to find a human that we can follow that will lead us toward the hope that is eternal life in Heaven’s peace.

Thankfully the One we’re called to follow only appeared as a man for a moment but remained fully God all the while. Is He popular? No. Is His way easy? No. Will it be then many who do follow Him with crosses in their hands and the hope in their hearts of trading them one day for crowns?

No.

But popularity was never the point. Living life is the point and it’s something that all of us should want to do forever. And again, thankfully He who we’re called to follow has promised us the gift of eternal life.

Only problem is that His promise waits at the end of a life that will definitely help us to better understand what hope really is.

Sadly many are finding all of their hopes fulfilled within this world, promises being paid in fans and friends and profit and parades. Let us be so bold as to store up treasures like those in Heaven because here remains common the rebellions that have defined mankind for all of time. And yeah, we’ve all joined in them a time or two. But friends, “What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!”

The very result found by such men as Cain for killing his brother and Balaam for not refusing the reward he was offered to curse the Lord’s people and Korah and his followers found as the ground beneath them tore open and swallowed them and all that belonged to them.

Death comes to all who refuse to accept the gift of life offered them in the humility of Christ.

Pride remains the way of man and nothing about that will change as pride doesn’t know that it needs to.

One day it will learn though. For as much as death comes to all, so too does humility. But friends, our only chance at Heaven’s peace is if we seek the humility first while we’ve still that chance. Many won’t and many more will prove those who eagerly follow them as they’ll see in them the fun and enjoyment and success they themselves want in this life.

And they will have indeed had their reward much like the money that Balaam hopefully spent before he died in battle or the pride Cain found when he’d managed to rid himself of that brother of his who made him look bad or the power that Korah must have felt as all those who gathered to him supported him in his brazen rebellion of God via rejecting Moses and Aaron.

Yeah, they all found the rewards they were clearly looking for.

But they found eternal separation from God too.

So be careful what you ask for and where or from whom you seek to find it. For many are enjoying their rewards here and now. But what will that leave for them to find when we’ve all left all that’s found only here and only for now?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold