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as the world burns, blogging, faith, humor, insanitybytes22, life, opinion
Who wants to change the world? Not I! When I was very young somebody smart asked me, “what makes you think the world even wants to change?” It’s a really good philosophical question to ponder. Usually everybody always wants to change the world, but nobody ever wants to change themselves. Did the world even consent to your plans to give it a make over?
When you are all full of idealism and want to change the world, or perhaps burn it down as a group recently suggested, sometimes it’s good to try to figure out what your motivation is. Also, once you have totally burned down the whole world, it can be useful to think about what you might replace it with.
I’ve been watching people up close and personal, try to change the world since the 1960’s. What strikes me as kind of interesting, the more things change the more they really just stay the same. The world is still round, still spinning. Or perhaps not, perhaps it is really just our “plane of existence?” I’m good with some flat earth theories too, in fact, life becomes a lot easier to manage if you just imagine yourself on a surfboard, a plane of existence, rather than trapped on this spinning ball, hurling rapidly through space.
Can you even manage your own surfboard? Can you manage to stay on your feet so effortlessly you can just kind of kick back and relax? That is the part we people need to get a grip on, long before we try stepping out onto a spinning ball, hurling through space. Shrink your world down, don’t try to expand it beyond your means.
So, a big problem with trying to change the world is that we people have a sin problem. We need Jesus. We need grace. We need to be forgiven, loved, and healed. Restored into right relationship with our Creator. We need our internal world and our spiritual world to be in good working order, because the world around us tends to become a reflection of who we are inside. Who we are, not who other people are.
One of my big issues with social justice campaigns is that I fully understand we simply cannot legislate morality. You cannot mandate empathy and compassion. You cannot force and control love. People are trying to build what they think will be a better world, through force, through shaming, through the law, through external means. Sin is a real thing and it is an internal and a spiritual problem. Therefore it needs a spiritual and internal solution.
I can’t “rid the world of sin” by making sin really unpopular and socially unacceptable. That is just like trying to play a game of whack-a-mole. All you do at best, is drive sin underground where it festers and grows. Ironically the right side of the aisle often gets this just as wrong as the left side does.
So, racism is definitely a sin. So is outright misogyny, blatant hatred of women. So is envy. So is worry. So is greed. So is perceiving groups of people like, all cops, as not being made in the image of God. So is gossip, also sin. So is mockery and reviling. That can be a tricky one, or at least it is for me. I don’t want to be a scoffer, a cynic, a reviler. Now try telling me the government is just comprised of “benevolent love” and watch me fall off my surfboard and cackle hysterically like a scorning hyena.
I’m an odd duck sometimes, as a young person I was absolutely delighted to discover total depravity, the concept of sin, the great revelation that people by nature are not just “good.” It was like a missing puzzle piece that slid in place and suddenly the world began to make sense. Like wow, I’m actually not crazy! It is not all my fault. I am not the one who broke the world. I don’t have to carry around guilt and shame anymore. God is real. There is hope!
Because when you discover the existence of sin, you make the correct diagnosis and you are now free to go seek the cure. Jesus is the cure.
James 4 is really helpful, the whole chapter really, but in short “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”
Randy Epps said:
The whack a mole reference really rings true. As soon as the news cycle cools on one issue, let’s hurry and find the next one to be offended over.
The heart being deceitful, above all else, and desperately wicked also helps me to see things in the right perspective.
Change comes when heart changes.
Without the heart change, well, the things I want to do I just can’t seem to do.
I don’t want to change the world, either. Too hard.
Maybe, the best we can do is to continue to try and introduce this “new Change Agent” into the mix.
The only One who can change the heart.
Thanks IB!
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insanitybytes22 said:
“Without the heart change, well, the things I want to do I just can’t seem to do.”
Exactly! That’s a great paraphrase of some really wise words.
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seekingdivineperspective said:
We are on exactly the same page today, IB. We can’t force anyone’s heart to change. All we can do is hand ours over to Jesus so that HE will change them. Without Him all attempts at change are futile.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Yep! We can’t force anyone’s heart to change. We can’t even force our own heart to change! But we can turn to Jesus and He will change us.
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jsolbakken said:
The world is like a light bulb. How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but, the light bulb has to really want to change.
This world is destined to be destroyed. It has no future. Most people are taking the wide road through the great gate that leads to destruction. Only a precious few are following the narrow road to go through the small gate that leads to life.
When the chips were all on the line, Jesus prayed this way in John 17:
6 I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.
7 Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.
8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.
9 I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.
Even Jesus did not waste His breath praying for the losers who rejected Him, not when time was running out and He had to make every Word count.
It’s sad, but, don’t hold it against God that He gives the losers what they want, even what they shake their pathetic fists for and demand.
I like this blog because there seem to be winners here, and not many losers. I’m sick of stupid losers, I need a break from them. So, thanks for doing this blog, it is God’s work in every way.
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Citizen Tom said:
Remember there were two crosses next to Jesus’ cross, and one of the men on those crosses received salvation.
Jesus asks us to pray for the losers too because unlike Jesus we don’t who is a loser and who is not. The Great Commission requires us to spread the Good News to everyone. Well, Matthew 7:6 does give us a little slack.
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jsolbakken said:
Yes, of course, I agree, there was one winner sinner on one side of Jesus and a loser sinner on His other side.
I feel sad the way Jesus felt sad when He watched people walk away from Him, like the the rich young ruler, for example, who loved his stuff and status too much to give it up for a mere Messiah. But we need to brush away our tears and blow our nose and get on with our Father’s business, as it were, so to speak, if you know what I mean. I say this because I’ve wasted a lot of time agonizing over people who weren’t going to budge and it only made me resentful. I find I’m less resentful if I just move on
and let the dead bury their own dead.
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insanitybytes22 said:
You make a really good point! I tend to suffer from some survivor’s guilt and so leaving people behind is not my strong suit. Many times the Lord has said to me, brush the dust off your sandals, move on, let it go, let the dead bury the dead. And when I still struggle to walk away, He’ll remind me, you have to be willing to leave behind, houses, brothers, sisters, mother, father. He is really not kidding about putting Him first in your life, always, before all others.
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jsolbakken said:
“you have to be willing to leave behind, houses, brothers, sisters, mother, father. He is really not kidding about putting Him first in your life, always, before all others.”
It’s not easy. It really goes against the grain for the sincere and empathetic Christian, who “Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.”
I don’t mean to say we should be unkind or rude, or even give up on anybody, but, I do mean to say we must be realistic and keep our priorities straight. When I say “we” I mean to say “me.” I believe in rebuking my self and exhorting others.
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Citizen Tom said:
@jsolbakken
God changes hearts, not us. We can only obey our Lord, and that is our reward.
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Citizen Tom said:
Reblogged this on Citizen Tom and commented:
When I was reading Insanitybytes22’s post, this verse came to mind.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Thanks, Tom. Much appreciated. Great verse, too. I really like that, ” I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts.” That is exactly what happens when people actually walk with the Lord for real. We don’t have to teach people all the “rules,” He will do that, He will write it on our hearts.
I remember a kid who wasn’t supposed to put a foot in the kitchen when we were cooking. So naturally he would put every possible part of his body but his feet, in the kitchen! It was quite comical, but that really shows the problems with the law. The little guy’s heart had to eventually figure out that we were just trying to keep him from getting burned or stepped on. Once his heart caught on to the reasoning here, he no longer tried to sneak into the kitchen. 🙂
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Citizen Tom said:
@insanitybytes22
God gave us children so we can see ourselves mirrored in them.
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jeffw5382 said:
How radical it seems to those who examine themselves honestly that- We are Truly forgiven
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insanitybytes22 said:
It really is radical! Downright scandalous, even. Wowsers! We’d all be singing and dancing in the streets if we really grasped the implications fully. Sometimes we do, we have moments when we just get caught up in the joy. 🙂
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jeffw5382 said:
Glimpses for sure but that confounding self tho
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Mama Equis said:
EXACTLY
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Rudy U Martinka said:
Insanity bytes 2
King Solomon figured out your question 3000 years ago, in my opinion.
That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. (Ecclesiastes 1:15)
To understand how this verse relates to the subject of your post take alloy of time to discern the message of King Solomon’s Ecclesiastes.
Since far too many people don’t even know because they were never taught in school who King Solomon (Wisdom) or Jesus Christ (Love) was or the wisdom of their teachings, a lot of people will keep on trying to straighten out a lot of crooked reasoning why people make foolish choices. It will be as you stated, “trying to play a game of whack-a-mole.”
Good thoughts in your post in my opinion.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Thank you, Rudy. Much appreciated. I really like that, “that which is crooked cannot be made straight.” You can’t build a house on a flawed foundation. You can’t heal a wound over the top of a deception.
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Tricia said:
Dang this was really good IB. How do you consistently put out so many quality posts? I’m lucky if I get one zinger a quarter! 😉
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atimetoshare.me said:
It’s all so simple, yet the world will not hold on to anything that God offers. Love the Lord, your God and treat others as you would like to be treated. So simple, but so true. We must stop all this offense over everything and start looking outside of ourselves.
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jsolbakken said:
Micah 6 puts it this way:
7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
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scatterwisdom said:
insanitybytes22
Good thoughts in my opinion.
Sadly, when I read the news every morning, I am reminded of an old saying in regards to folly being reported.
“If things don’t change, they are going to stay the same.”
That would be great if the news was reporting wise actions instead of foolish actions. And yes, every folly can be traced to a sin for the most part.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
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Mel Wild said:
“Usually everybody always wants to change the world, but nobody ever wants to change themselves.”
BINGO! We can only change ourselves, and only Jesus can transform us. This is how we change the world.
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SLIMJIM said:
Right on sister!
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insanitybytes22 said:
Thank you for your kindness, Slim.
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SLIMJIM said:
You’re welcome!
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