In a perfect world, whatever that is,
there would be no need to determine what behaviors are good or bad because if
we lived in a perfect world those things would be non-issues as the rule of law
would be LOVE. But that’s not world we live in now is it?
Though
people talk idealistically and from time to time make serious attempts to aspire
to higher thinking and acts of kindness towards others, we are ruled by the
drive to feel. For most, feelings are more important than truth. We are
propagandized and brainwashed into believing we should think of ourselves: what
we need, what makes us happy and the importance of “more” as the priority
though we will deny it to a faults. We strive to be our highest selves! But the
problem with all that is, as good as it may sound, the higher we go the less
caring, less concerned, less involved and ultimately less loving we become.
Substituting quantity for quality we have devolved in our perception and
dysfunctional in our ability to be intimate. The old saying “if it feels good
do it” captures a generation consumed with pleasure and seduced by advertising
that says we need more, youth is superior to the wisdom and experience of age, the
mirror is our guide, how much we have and how hip we are is everything. We have
become like Narcissus who was seduced by his arch-enemy Nemesis into staring at
his image in the water until he became so enamored with his reflection that
lost his will to live and died. Not we call it SELFIE not realizing what it’s
doing to us. We have become a culture of visually sedated zombies that thrive
on the delusional, seduced by what we think we need becoming severely addicted
to absolute mindlessness. In other words, we are seriously selfish and
radically stupid! Year after year, generation after generation we have rebranded
ourselves as blind narcissists. Worst of all… we have created God in our own
image.
Can someone help me make sense of
what sense the nonsensical machinations of the unenviable senseless sensualists
makes? A mouthful huh? But it’s a very pertinent question to ask of a clueless
culture. All we like sheep have lost our way. We’ve become lovers of SELF and
money. It’s ok to be arrogant and proud. We scoff at and mock God. Children are
radically disobedient to their parents and are rebelliously ungrateful. Nothing
is sacred. We are unloving, unforgiving and we heartlessly slander each other
at the drop of a hat. There is no self-control. We have become a culture of the
cruel; oppressive bully’s and haters of what is good. We are so self absorbed
that we think good is evil and evil is the new good! Loyalty? Out the window!
Betrayal is easy whether it’s family, our friends, our spouses, and our
employers. Our conscience has been unplugged. We are reckless and arrogant. We
encourage boasting and self-promotion. We love pleasure more anything… even
more than God. We can act religious but it ends there because we either deny or
reject the very power that could make us whole. We live in a world
called ME!
You know the interesting thing
about what I just said? It is verbatim a direct quote from a book that is 2000
years old. The interesting thing is the words that precede that 2000 year old
statement. It all hangs on this… “Mark my words Timothy; in the last
days, PERILOUS TIMES WILL COME...” Though this warning seems harsh
and far-fetched, it is a pinpoint accurate definition of what will take place
in the last moments of time; which will be like no other just before the end of
all things. We’re not getting better friends, we are drastically worse. Our
views are skewed, our ability to discern almost nonexistent, and our
sensitivity, NUMB. We are deaf, dumb and blind though we imagine we hear; we
think we are smarter and our vision irreversibly impaired.
Tragically, we don’t realize just
how bad it actually is. After all, who wants to hear or know negative things,
right? We just want positive. We like safe zones. It’s so funny how we decry
the evils of humanity for abusing humans, animals, the environment, a person’s right
to sexual preference; yet the whole time we are clueless about the unseen world
that drives the beast of our self indulgence. We are deaf to the whispers of those
voices from the dark that incite our minds and enslave our souls. We are
bewilderingly ignorant to the objectives of a militant malevolent being who
hates the very air we breathe and does all within his power to pollute our
minds and keep the truth of who he is and who we really are far from our sight.
Especially those who are supposed to understand; know their position and wield
a power so radical it can cut through all he does and demand his unfeigned obedience.
Amazing! Those who are supposed to don’t really know who they are or the power
they possess thereby allowing him to mercilessly punish the masses.
Remember that great scene in the
Wizard of Oz where Dorothy, the Tin Man, Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion are
all in the great hall of the Emerald City before the Great and Terrible Oz,
shaking in their boots? He had them trembling with fear and bowing before him.
Suddenly Dorothy’s little dog Toto runs into a strange little booth were a
curtain hides this ordinary man rattling throttles and making balls of fire rise
to the ceiling where a large screen projects a fierce and ominous face which,
as we come to find out, is the exact opposite of the man behind the curtain.
Once the old side show magician realizes what Toto has done he attempts to pull
the curtain back and hide himself and his powerlessness. He announces to the
terrified four who have suddenly taken notice of what Toto has done, “PAY NO
ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN” in a thunderous voice and dramatic
display. The jig is up. The beauty of this little moment in the movie is that
they realize they have been duped. There is no great and powerful Oz. They are
no longer fooled. The result: they find out that they actually had the power
all along to change things.
How blind are you? How gullible?
Can you hear something and know whether what you are hearing is the truth or a
lie? Can you discern? What about love? Do you find it on EHarmony, Match.com,
or even worse, Tinder? What is your God? That’s right I said what, not who. Is
it food, television, money, sex, drugs, things, a person, status? We are upside
down folks. Evil is good and good, evil. The truth is now a lie and even worse;
we make absurd statements like “whatever your truth is” as if there are no
absolutes, no conclusions. Whatever you want to believe is OK! Even our
religion is dry and stale like an old piece of bread that has been left out on
the counter for months. Our wineskins are cracked and brittle. Our wine has
turned to vinegar and spilled out on the ground. We try to put new wine in old skins,
which can no longer expand only to burst, destroying the new wine completely.
What sense does it make to call
what we are doing “life” when we are like lemmings jumping off the cliff in
pursuit of what we imagine will please us. How long will it please us? Death
has unusual timing. It shows up when we least expect it. No one leaves this
planet alive. We are an insatiable lot. We can never get enough. There is
always something bigger, better, more, more, more! What sense does it make to
surrender? After all only quitters do that. What sense does it make to believe
in a God that can’t be seen or allows such horrible things to happen to people?
No sense at all, right? What sense does “you must lose your life in order to
find it” mean? These are the exact opposite of everything we are bombarded with
from every direction, every day. Right?
The
greatest lie ever told is the longest lie ever believed. Call it myth, call it metaphor;
but consider this… in the story of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis is one story
that deserves serious attention. In it, a talking serpent (aka fallen Lucifer the
archangel who, until man, was God’s greatest creation) suggests to Eve (the
first woman created) that she eat from a tree at the center of the garden known
as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve responds to the suggestion by
repeating what the One who created the garden and the trees (God) had said to
her when He instructed her not to eat from the one the serpent was trying to
get her to. God told Eve that something bad would happen to her if she did; something
she was completely unfamiliar with but that the serpent knew very well… she
would die. Little did Eve know that the one who was seducing her had himself
partaken of that tree long before. Eve was very special to the Creator and the
serpent knew it well. The serpent knew exactly who she was and why she had been
created. His response to her recollection of God’s words to her was the
greatest lie ever told. Make her blind to who she was! Lucifer himself is a bit
of a creator in his own right. His greatest creation is one we all know well and
one time or another all do, its called “the lie”. He replied to Eve, “That's not true; you won’t die. God said that because He knows
that when you eat it, you will be just like Him”. There is much in this moment that we could talk about, but this
is the ultimate deception and the very one that has been passed on
person-to-person, generation after generation to every man, woman and child
since the original. It’s that God doesn’t want you to be like Him! But the
truth is, being like Him is exactly what He wants you to be. In other words,
“Look Eve, God just doesn’t want you to enjoy the things that will please you.
I mean, after all everything He does pleases Him right? He’s so selfish. Why
shouldn’t you enjoy pleasure too, Eve? He’s not telling you the truth. He just
wants to scare you. There is no such thing as dying, Eve… I promise!”
Why
did Lucifer want Eve to eat? Because he knew well in advance where his own
demise was going to come from. Knowing that, he devised a devious plan to
deceive and kill the very womb from which his Judge, jury and Executioner would
come! He has never stopped seeking to kill what is in the womb that could
potentially cause his plans to be thwarted. He hates God and he hates those who
are created greater than he was because they were created in the image of God
and designed to blot out Lucifer’s memory forever.
Knowing
that let me ask you a question. What is abortion? Do you really understand it
or its implications? In light of this story, I don’t believe we do because if
we did, we would never participate. It is an Orthodox Jewish belief that a
piece of the Divine is each human soul. If that is the case, what are we actually
killing? Like all choices that are about self, it goes hand in hand with not
only the reality of the level of deception humanity grovels under; it causes us
to agree with the robber of souls himself. The fruit of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil is self-centeredness because it blinds our eyes,
closes our ears and causes our minds to believe the lie.
What
sense does it make to live for ourselves, gain all the things the world says we
need, yet in all actuality God says separate us from Him and ultimately produce
not just death here, but one that never ends? No sense whatsoever to me. Yet
the hardest thing we will ever do is come to the understanding that what we
think is good is not what God says is good.
We
are in the world but not of it. Make sense? No! He says that if we love the
world and the things of it, we are diametrically opposed to everything that He
is and that He calls good. Why? Someone else is ruling this planet. Makes no
sense to a rational mind whatsoever. The world is at enmity to God. We can only
shove that so far down; usually not past our ME button. The word enmity means the
state or feeling of being actively opposed or hostile towards someone or
something; in other words, we are enemies with God. And what sense does that
make? If you truly believe in God the answer is, none.
If love was the rule of law and the
only judge and jury were its attributes, mercy and grace, then the appeal would
be for us to choose the only thing that makes sense... life! He who loses his
life will find it…
Make sense?
© 2017 Steven Bliss
