They would love to get one of us drunk, or to hear us gossip, slander someone else, tell a lie, rebuke our parents.
There is a virginity that has nothing to do with sex. The world and all its non-virgins have as a primary goal, to fill its ranks with as many former virgins as possible. Whatever guilt exists within the hearts of the formerly chaste, is temporarily mitigated by erasing the purity of others.
We are a fallen race. There is no argument here. Look around you! We all have problems . . . even the best of us! There is a problem on earth, and within humanity, and we see its results in sin and death.
We are lowly, and low. And it is our constant tendency to keep others down in the ditch with us! It's too hard to climb out, yet it gets lonely down there, if people start climbing out of the pit by clinging to the Cross.
So we tear down others. We put them down. We tease. We gossip. We stir the pot with words and deeds that divide us from one another. We join political parties. We define ourselves by what we are not (I'm not one of them!), versus what we are (children of God).
Don't let anyone look down on you.
Listen to Paul. We are not doormats.
I look at my life, and wonder how I have ended up so close to where I started. What happened to the potential? The gifts? The talents? Where is the evidence that God provides handsomely for His own?
In my case, it is a weird need to be liked by everybody. But the end result has been that fewer and fewer people respect someone like that. You let people put you down, because you want to be nice. But that just empowers them more. We become doormats that people think they can push around.
And it is hard to follow God's plan when you're a doormat.
Expect, no demand, respect from others. Be kind to them. Love them. But make sure they know that you are a child of God with dignity.
As I look back upon a decade of blogging, I will prepare an updated version and republish. It is ten years since this first blog. In it, I say something about, how did I end up an adult, with nothing to show for all the promise I had as a kid.
ReplyDeleteI may have a lot more to say about that topic, one day. But here it is ten years later, and in many ways I am no further down the road. But as of August, 2019, I do seem, finally, to be at a point of launching to the next level. I am finally in a career, and a job, where I say, all weekend "I can't wait for Monday morning." I leave each day at work, saying "Wow!! That was great!!"
The key has been - patience. Patience, and starting out with more trust. I could have done the things I'm doing now, ten years, twenty, thirty years ago . . . But I was always too limited by doubts. This desire to please others made me hesitate . . . what if I made a wrong move?
But I have learned to move, anyway - - - even if it's the wrong move. You can't do unless you try.