Plato had this theory that there was another reality that was eternal, unchanging, and ageless. He said that most of humanity didn’t realize that what they could perceive and what they based their knowledge on was not the real reality, it was a shadow of the real reality. Some people do get a glimpse of the real reality, but when they go back to tell the rest, they are accused of being crazy and whatever else fits the situation (dangerous, heretic, etc…). It’s like the person who figured out that the earth wasn’t flat. He was rejected by everyone who ‘knew better’.
Plato had a story about a cave that he used to illustrate his theory of existence. In his book ‘Republic’ he invites readers to imagine a “cave in which some prisoners are bound so that they can look only at the wall in front of them. Behind them is a fire whose light casts shadows of various objects on the wall in front of the prisoners. Because the prisoners cannot see the objects themselves, they regard the shadows they see as true reality. One of the prisoners eventually escapes from the cave and, in light of the sun, sees real objects for the first time, becoming aware of the big difference between them and the shadow images he had always taken for reality.”
The cave “represents the world we see and experience with our senses”, and the world of sunlight represents another realm that Plato called, the realm of Forms. The prisoners represent ordinary people, who, “in taking the sensible world to be the real world, are condemned to darkness, error ignorance, and illusion.” The escaped prisoner is the one who has seen the “light, truth, beauty, knowledge, and true reality.”
If he returns to the cave to tell the prisoners how things really are, “they will think his brain has been addled. “This difficulty is sometimes faced by those who have seen the truth and decide to tell others about it.”
I’m telling you this story because it hits close to home. There are two different realities. They have been referred to as ‘flesh and spirit’, ‘the world’s way and God’s way’, ‘worldly and spiritual’, ‘temporal and eternal’, etc…
Jesus references His Father’s ‘Kingdom’ when He’s teaching. He also remarks at His use of language that the listeners can understand instead of using ‘plain language’ that will go over their heads.
“I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father.”-Jesus in John 16:25
When He did use plain language, it got him in trouble. He tells His followers that if they talk about His Kingdom, the way it works, and the real truth, then they’ll be hated, too.
“If you lived on the world’s terms, the world would love you as one of its own. But since I picked you to live on God’s terms and no longer on the world’s terms, the world is going to hate you. …They are going to do all these things to you because of the way they treated me, because they don’t know the One who sent me. If I hadn’t come and told them all this in plain language, it wouldn’t be so bad. As it is, they have no excuse.”-Jesus in John 15:19, 21-22 MSG
He tells analogies (parables) and says “The Kingdom is like….” in an effort to get people to use the shadows to get a hint of the reality. (see Matthew 13, 20, and Luke 13 to study more.)
1 Corinthians 13 uses plain language in reference to what I’m talking about. Look at this:
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” -1 Corinthians 13:12
There are two separate realities that you continually have to choose between. The Bible speaks to people in both realms of awareness. There is an eternal language, for those who can hear it, and there is a temporal language for those who are still finding their bearings. Many senseless arguments erupt between people who are more fluent in ‘eternal’ and people who are more fluent in ‘temporal’. It’s senseless because one group is talking about ‘x’ and the other is talking about ‘y’. We need mediators so that people can understand each other better and actually get somewhere. More often than not, they would realize they believe the same thing. Instead, they’re much like allies with bags over their heads. They fight the wrong people.
It would be helpful to categorize things into their appropriate realms. The spiritual realm is the greatest because it never dies. Consider what belongs there and out of those things, what is the greatest? The Bible is clear about what we should be concerning ourselves with and it says that love is the greatest. What falls in line after that? For example, where do the personal rules you follow regarding practice fit? Where does your treatment of others fit? They’re in two different realms. One is more important than the other.
Spend your time on the things that exist in the eternal world, or as you’re used to hearing it: ‘Walk in the spirit.” You have to take inventory of your treasures and start sorting them so that you spend your time on what matters and shelf the things that don’t.
You’ve been in rain so long, warm and dry is a memory you’re too tired to visit. I know where you are, punishing yourself because you think it’s what you deserve.
You believe in a God of love so intense that it demands justice. You think there is no justice big enough for what you did because people still have to walk in the life sentence you gave them with your mistakes. The rain isn’t strong enough to penetrate the outside and wash you on the inside. But, still, you’re out there hoping that your skin will open up and just let you drown.
God is a God of love and it’s a love so intense that it demands justice. There is no mistake in that belief. It’s just that you have forgotten Jesus. Was that not enough? Justice fell on Him so that you could come back inside.
God is not afraid of getting wet. He leaves the windows open so that maybe you’ll wash in with the rain you’re trying to drown in.
The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture.-Romans 8:34-35 MSG
There is this question floating around out there. It’s asked by people who see the spiritual depth and wonder if they’ll ever get there. The stories about how people get there scare the crap out of them. It’s always some sort of life breaking catastrophe with a miracle in the middle and an album of songs in the aftermath. So the question is, “Do I have to go through something terrible to really see God?”
They all wonder what is going to happen to them.
What they don’t understand is it’s not about what someone will do to them. It’s about what they’ll do. It’s the moment when you see yourself at your worst, are clear about your fault, and are completely hopeless.
The question that comes next: “Do I have to sin to really see God?” But, that’s only dating the false assumption that they don’t sin.
If you think that you are without sin or have the ability to be strong enough to avoid it, then you do not know God. It is impossible to receive a gift if you think you don’t need it. Grace is not yours if you spend your life running from it.
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?-Romans 6:1
If that is what you took from this, then you’re not getting it.
By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?-Romans 6:2
Grace is not yours if you spend your life running from it. That means that you can live the most pristine moral life and still not have a relationship with God. Squeaky cups and dirty guts. The best wine could be poured into your glass and come out with rehydrated bits of yesterday’s gross.
You can hear the best delivered truths and your preconceived agenda twists the meaning right out of them.
Those who have been saved by grace in the moment of complete terror and spiritual despair know that their salvation cannot be messed with. They know this because it came to them at their worst. They’re not living in fear, they’re living their new life knowing that sin can never, ever destroy them.
What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?-Romans 6:15
From the moment the Gospel has been preached, the same questions come up. They still come up. Nobody is saying anything new, it’s just that the more explicit the message, the more intense the challenge to the pious. People fight the Gospel like they’re fighting for their life. It’s just that they’re fighting for a life they’re supposed to die to.
Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?-Romans 6:16
You’re obeying sin when you’re living in fear of it. That’s how you become a slave to sin.
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. -Romans 6:20
Sin is a micromanaging slave owner welding a whip of guilt and threats of condemnation. The overweight bully picks on you because a sense of entitlement demands that everyone else satisfies him while he gorges himself on making you feel like you’re nothing but a failure.
You know you have to be righteous, nobody lied to you regarding that, but if you actually think you have the ability to satisfy the demand, then you are a slave under a master who will never tell you that the war is over and freedom has been won.
It’s time to abandon your little slave shack of faith and run. Yeah, your oppressor will come after you, but by the time you get a chance to glance over your shoulder, you’ll be able to see him swallowed up by the Sea of Truth.
Even better? If sin believes you’re dead, then he no longer has the power to kill you and won’t come looking for you.
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.-Romans 6:3-4
No amount of reasoning can take what Jesus did away from you. Grace wins every single time.
How often have you had to hide the unfinished edges of your attempt to make something good out of your life with lies and fake smiles? Do you not know that what you hope for is actually real and it’s not your responsibility to think it up, get it started, or to maintain it?
But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.-Romans 6:21
It doesn’t matter how dressed up you can get. You can’t blur out the fact that inside your heart you know that you haven’t had a good meal in a long time and you’re starving. Maybe you shouldn’t sit at the table full of spiritual anorexics. They’ve lied to themselves for so long, solid truth makes them sick.
Sin is a master who cannot be satisfied. No matter how good you are, you know you’re not good enough and it makes you die a little inside. That’s the other side of why the ‘wages of sin is death’.
But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.-Romans 6:22-23
It was the beginning of summer in 2006 and I was sitting on my back deck by myself. I went out there to drink my coffee and have a conversation with my Creator. I was hurting… mourning the loss of myself and my friends and my marriage. Life was moving forward. Spring had sprung and it was warm enough to have coffee outside in the morning. I had a baby that March and she was getting chubby and smiling her constant smile.
But, I was a mess. Life was calling me forward and I didn’t want to go. Grace was unknown territory for me and I didn’t know the rules. I needed the rules, they made me feel safe, but I had broken them all and I was a shattered cast-out who was going to live though it.
I knew a lot about church and churchiness and what you’re supposed to do when you’re hurting. You’re supposed to praise God in the pain, for what-I didn’t know-…, but I really wanted to do something right.
My house sits up on a hill and my back deck faces the sky where all of my sins were carried out. It faces the sky that blankets all the people who I hurt. I looked at the all knowing sky, who could see everything, and I thought about God. I thought about my failure. I thought about the unknown future for all of us and I winced.
“God,” I prayed, “thank you for rebuilding me.”
I knew He was rebuilding me. I didn’t know what my new life would look like or how He was going to redeem my pathetic mess, but I still acknowledged and said it out loud.
When God talks to me, it’s a voice that seems to come from within, but I know it’s not my voice. It’s an interjected thought that is received exactly the way a spoken word would be received. God spoke up immediately…
“Serena, I removed you.”
The thought struck me as odd and foreign. His voice always quickens my heart. He uses few words and they’re profound enough to keep speaking when the words stop. I didn’t have to think about it for long because I understood it. It took me a bit to accept it, but I understood it.
Removed.
Removed from relationships. Removed from my religious community. Removed from my old life. Removed from my old comfort. Removed from my old safety…. I was removed and set down in a space of faith or die.
This stole the shame and guilt of ruining something I didn’t know how to fix. This truth gave it new meaning and purpose. My failure tangled with grace and I really didn’t know which way was up.
I once was a dried up piece of dirt until somebody planted a seed of faith. The seed took and the rains soaked me and washed me. I grew into a green sprout, drinking the sun and digging in deeper with my roots. I grew taller and stronger, even though I was surrounded by weeds. Weeds of twisted faith and oppression surrounded me and stunted my growth. Then I was ripped up and sent through a sieve. My hard covering was torn from me and I was naked and exposed. Scared to death until the Field Master’s hands scooped me up and called me a seed. The cycle of life and death continues and I morph with the will of the Field Owner.
Removed.
He removed me and replanted me and sang over me. The same voice that commanded the expanse of space to divide, and the water to fill the earth, and the land to divide the water, and the birds to fly, and the beasts to roam, and the body of Adam to live is the same voice that commanded my life to take a new form. The breath of His words filled my dead spaces and commanded me to, “Grow.”
It’s God’s grace that gives me life. It’s His choosing that gives me purpose. I am not my own and I know this because I’ve seen too much. I know better. I don’t do everything right. I stumble around with the best and worst, but I know what my purpose is. I know that my life is not my own. I was saved for a purpose and continue to try to live that out. Every breath I breathe is a gift. Every smile, every laugh, every lazy night with my family and good meal from my oven is a gift.
I was knocked down and torn to pieces by my failure. I was on the wrong track and I didn’t know it until I was blinded and disoriented. Then the voice of Jesus spoke grace into me and gave me a new purpose.
‘But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’-Acts 26:15-18
If you are like I was, lost and torn to pieces by your own failure, then consider this message. You are not abandoned or cast out. You are loved. You are being rebuilt. And maybe, you too, have been removed. Removed ‘from your people’ and from the others. You’re a traveler in a foreign land and you have a message. Give in to grace. Fall in to forgiveness. Consider the purpose. The sun will rise and dissipate this dark night that scares and torments you. I have seen the sunrise. I have felt the warmth of new life on my face and I am here to tell you that it’s real.
Hard days make me think about prayer. My thoughts, in general, can be summed up in: “It’s all prayer.”
I say that because I don’t think my thoughts/questions/observations are anything but prayer. If prayer is a constant sort of ‘knowing that God is with you and always speaking and always listening’ then everything is prayer. Even if it’s just a silent knowing that makes your insides look up with a child-like look that says, “Am I doing this right?…Are you proud of me?”
Life is hard sometimes. It doesn’t even have to be the big things that make it hard. It’s the little things that can bully you into a corner.
As I write this, I’m at the end of a rough day. I’ve had some little things pick on me and I’ve been on my feet against them for hours now. I could pray that things get tied up or fixed, but I don’t usually do that. I think it’s because I believe that everything happens for a reason, …for a lesson. I would rather have the lesson. I would rather go through the process without tearing my fingernails on the walls.
Bad days don’t make me feel like I did something wrong, or that God has stepped away, or that Satan is winning. Bad days are just part of life and entirely based on perspective.
When Job was going through his thing, he didn’t give credit to Satan, even though Satan was the one attacking him. He gave credit to God, knowing that it was God who had the say so over his life. This is incredibly important to understand. Job’s friends blamed him and Job gave credit to God. At the end of Job’s story, when God finally joined the argument, He said that it was Job who was right.
When people reject the idea of God allowing Satan to attack you, it’s because they can’t see a ‘Good God’ doing something like that. People make bad choices under Satan’s attack, why would God allow that?
But, they’re looking at the wrong thing. They’re forgetting who God is. His sovereignty is indisputable. It’s so much to the point that you have to remind yourself that He can be trusted and that He’s good. Everything happens under His supervision. That means you’re safe with Him.
Only what you believe has the power to destroy you. This is true because only what you believe has the power to save you. If you are missing belief, you are destroyed no matter what you do or how good you are.
It’s more than believing He existed or even believing that He is the Son of God. It’s is believing what He did. You have to know what He did before you understand any other concept in the Christian faith.
Job didn’t give credit to Satan and because of that, he submitted his fate and every speck of hope and doubt leading up to it, to God. It was complete and total submission because Job knew who God really was. He told God, “Even if you kill me, I’ll still trust you.”
Do you know God like that?
The only time I can remember someone rebuking Satan was when Jesus said it with Peter. Jesus told Peter what was going to happen to Him during the crucifixion, Peter told Jesus that it would never happen. That’s when Jesus rebuked Satan.
He told Satan to ‘get behind’ Him. He said that Satan was an obstruction because he tries to get people to rely on their own understanding of God and not open up in submission to what is not able to be understood.
You cannot reason with the understanding of God. He’s God. He knows everything beginning to end. You cannot reason with that, you can only submit to that.
If God is in control, then your circumstances are God’s will. You can’t submit like that if you don’t know God like that.
Isn’t submission what prayer is? If you’re giving thanks, then you’re giving credit. If you’re asking for help, then you’re recognizing Who has control. Submission is prayer and if you know God, then you’re submitted. It’s impossible to not be. Therefore: It’s all prayer.
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.-1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
“I have a friend to whom I go for Christian advice and lately she is going through something with her family and I don’t think she’s acting very ‘Christian’. It’s really bothering me. What should I do or say to her?”
When someone asks questions like this, my first thought is usually, “What version of ‘Christian’ are you comparing her to?”
I think that people need someone to look up to. They need someone who won’t let them down. The problem with that is that people will always let you down.
We can’t set people up that way. We put them on pedestals and are frustrated when they can’t balance that high.
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.-Romans 7:15
People do the best they can and fight within themselves when they don’t measure up to their own standards. It’s suffocating to have to measure up to the foreign standards of others, too. It’s a fight of survival that has you completely focused on pleasing people and leaves no room for relying on the grace of Jesus to give them rest at night.
If people are honest in their relationship with you, then you will see the places that are imperfect. A good friend walks through the journey with them with enough grace to soften the blow of being a human. If you’re not a good friend, but only there for what you can get out of the relationship, then you will be a constant source of graceless judgment for them. You will never find a human being that can maintain the level of need that you are searching to fill. No human can do what only God can do.
Too often people will supplement their relationship with God with a relationship with a most-of-the-time Godly person. People will cling to pastors, pastors wives, or other recognized leaders and suck the life out of them as though these people were the Well of Living Water. Your church leaders are people. They cannot sustain you in the way that you need them to. You are pulling water out of a well that runs dry, gets contaminated, or loses the ability to pour out.
If you are getting your ‘food and drink’ from God, then you won’t be so desperate when people fail to measure up to your standards.
My heart breaks for people who are under the constant critical eye of the people they are trying to serve. If they want to maintain some distance so they can walk through their own bumpy life without the perpetual approving or disapproving comments from others, then they have to put on an Oscar winning performance every time they walk out in public. They’re in a no-win situation because people can tell that they’re holding back. The constant smile, constant positive attitude… it feels like a disillusioned, one-dimensional facade because, a lot of the time, it is.
This is why it’s hard to talk about your failures or questions in your church community. You can’t have perfect people and real people at the same time. Do you want a show or do you want a safe place to be vulnerable?
The people who would rather have a show are the most vocal and sometimes have the most influence. Grace and real life create too many questions and, for a place that is supposed to be the standard and have all the answers, that doesn’t go over very well.
This is the real battle. While all the people are fighting amongst themselves, the safe places are robbed of truth and rendered useless to people who are spiritually dying. It is not people that you’re up against. The people are distractions while the real attack is against faith. Nobody is fighting for the truth when they’re all fighting each other over practice.
The only truth worth fighting for is the Gospel of Jesus before Fear gets his hands on it. It’s the only truth because it’s the only thing that is finished. Everything else is in process and doesn’t look like it should.
Take your eyes off of people, they’re a mess at their best. Cynicism makes you twice as blind.
What a hard road to trust in grace. Going against everything we know to be true about punishment, right and wrong, it is a real test to believe in the gift. It’s a love affair with the law that makes a marriage to Christ impossible.
It’s a crazy revelation to bleed the grace of Christ as though being abhorred was a requirement. The tongue that speaks of forgiveness is the same tongue that pulled in the lip of forbidden in the kiss of sin. The contrast is a testament and a challenge. The contrast reveals the false. If false your god, then that’s all you see.
Let the mouth of the sinner sing and ignore the screams accusing heresy.
The truth will not be muffled. Every good thing that is lost, let it be lost. If you don’t sing, the rocks will. Are you not smarter than a rock? Blood cries out from the ground. Why won’t you?
“Where truth is, the lie must flee; or, if it abideth, there must be a stern conflict, for the truth cannot and will not lower its standard, and the lie must be trodden under foot.” -Charles Spurgeon
She was telling her story. He saved her, He forgave her, and she was amazed. She knew how it sounded and she knew she had witnesses. But her witnesses denied what they saw for the sake of the punishment and she was alone. They called out to Him, “Rebuke her, Father.”
‘And he answered and said unto them, “I tell you that, if [she] should hold [her] peace, the stones would immediately cry out.’-Jesus in Luke 19:40 KJV
“As long as I have breath to lift my voice…the rocks shall not cry out in my place.”
God calls you to do things that are impossible for you. If you don’t look at Him then your plans will swallow you whole. You’ll get stressed and overwhelmed. You’ll see how impossible it is. You’ll feel the distance between what you want to happen, what is happening, and your inability to jump the rift.
Sit and crunch the cost. You’ll become very aware that you’re setting yourself up for failure. Then God asks, “Why would you plan for failure?”
When you dream and take the steps to make it happen, you have to keep looking at God. You really can’t look at the task. Doing that will only remind you that you can’t do it.
It is faith that keeps you from drowning and you’re not the boss.
I am ready to throw in the towel every day. I have no problem shutting everything down , slipping away, and disappearing. As soon as I hear the word, I’m gone.
I am an ant using my little legs to dig a tunnel through a mountain of stone and it hurts. I’m not alone… one of millions. If ten are digging in one direction, three are standing around, four are telling us we’re in the way, and three are shoveling rocks back in the hole.
My eyes are focused on something beyond the obvious. The obvious is, I’m nobody. I can’t do anything. I’m a flushed goldfish that re-emerged in a rip-current and I’m not big enough to get myself out. I’ll either end up drowned on the beach, food for a bigger fish, or I’ll actually reach my destination.
When you throw in your lot with God, He’ll either show up or not. I’d rather know than always have questions.
I try to do things that I cannot do. I could be an fool. Sometimes I feel like one. But I’m curious. I want to know how everything works. I want to find as many obstacles as possible and figure why they’re there and how to get passed them
One thing I know: The rip current of God’s will is stronger than anything I could do. If I threw in my towel and tossed my toddler toy back where I found it, things would still end up exactly the way they’re supposed to.
I come across some unfamiliar people and language out there in social media. For example, I once read a woman’s post that said she had to ‘go have intentional time’ with her husband. I couldn’t figure out if she just announced their naked time or if her relationship was so distant that she had to ‘intentionally’ make herself talk to him.
Either way, it was a bizarre mental picture she gave me. I wished she had kept it to herself. However, she was saying it in that way that a martyr announces to fellow martyr’s that it was her turn on the chopping block. She was looking for validation and for others to tell her that she was doing a good job.
It’s a sad thing to look for validation from a bunch of people. All they can do is blow smoke up your rear end and then hold the drug of public approval over you like a whip.
Everyone wants to look like everyone else and be the best ‘everyone else’ they can. I see the trends and the new phrases added to the repertoire, but I don’t know where any of it comes from. It seems like everyone reads the same books or listens to the same people, who ever is the coolest at the moment, and then takes their terminology and makes it the new ‘thing.’
“Blessed” people are ‘doing life’ with others, they’re doing things ‘well’, and they’re doing them ‘intentionally.’ Where do these things come from?
I read something in my social media feed that said something like this:
“I’m so blessed! My husband gave me the best present ever. He freed two sex slaves.”
It came with a picture of a certificate congratulating the recipient for being honored by the release of two sex slaves.
Are you freaking kidding me? What is this? Is this the new “I’m important!” thing?
I can’t figure out why it makes me sick to read this. I mean, there are several reasons, but I’m looking at it from a few different angles and something is wrong here.
My stream of consciousness went something like: Are you sure about that? How much did you pay for that piece of paper? How does someone even find this stuff? Is some sick freak out there marketing ‘feel good’ diplomas to rich American dummies? Did you see this on a late night infomercial? Where does the recipient of the certificate hang something like that?
If it’s even true, then how do they pick the girls to free? Is it like the reverse version of a slave auction? Do they check their muscle tone and teeth? Do they pick the ugly ones or the pretty ones? Do the girls know what is going on? Does some sweaty child molester pace in front of them, announcing a rich American woman’s birthday and force them to watch him size them up?
This is a 3D version of completely messed up. There is no way for the rest of the admiring world to know if these things are real, or how they are carried out. All they know is that a woman can say that she forwent a new Coach bag for the sake of a couple of lives. It just sounds like another way to make more money off of the very real and horrific problem.
They know you won’t buy them for sex, but maybe you’ll pay money to hear that they’re free?? Whatever makes you empty your pockets to feel good.
There are a lot of doors on this life journey. A lot of so-called shortcuts to holy importance, but they’re mirages. If you can sit around and feel awesome about your good deeds, then you’ve been lied to.
And when you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production … All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?-Matthew 6:5 MSG
I know a woman who will give you a gift and tell you how much it cost her to get it for you. She wants you to know how inconvenient it was so that you’ll appreciate it more. She thinks it makes the gift more special. What she doesn’t realize is that it doesn’t make anyone appreciate it more. It makes them think about the fact that the gift really isn’t worth the cost and it robs the value.
People just want to be validated and acknowledged for what they do, but as soon as you point to your own awesomeness, you poke holes in the sacrifice rendering it useless.
…and then Cain murdered Abel….
In an attempt to stand out above the rest, people will be pulled into all kinds of spiritual cons and traps of deception.
Don’t you think there are ‘get holy fast’ schemes just like there are ‘get rich fast’ schemes? Don’t be taken by the gas station taquitos when you’re on your way to a gourmet feast.
Beware of people who are showy in their flamboyant religiosity. There is a reason they’re cashing in right now. They don’t believe they’re actually going anywhere because they’re not.
Be careful of who you listen to. Some people can decorate their BS better than others.
Maybe I’m wrong and setting sex slaves free is a perfectly legitimate gift market (seriously, what the hell?)… but it sounds like a desensitized culture making desperate attempts to look like heros in the midst of their materialism. Ugh.
