The Broad Road That Leads to Destruction
These might seem like troubling times in River City and elsewhere in America, but the tune is ancient and ageless. Because our values are upside-down, our culture is chaotic. While professing personal choice and pleasure, it’s really about premeditated death and destruction. An invisible world because my faith was in the world. A world only about materialism and me.
Surrendering to Love, to God, when I could no longer find salvation in stuff. Like every prodigal child, living a life of ruin in my effort to evade my own existential expiration. A world I now clearly comprehend because it’s about God than me.
I also spy with my little green eyes, Evil. Evil was something I never truly noticed or truthfully believed in which made it even more treacherous. If you can’t see something, you can’t say something. Now I can see it and name it and its only purpose is to undermine Love and undo God’s good world.
Evil is an unnatural parasite that inhabits our spiritual and physical world. Easily infecting all our hearts as it seeks to destroy its host, hurt all humans, and harm all creation. It is in rebellion to God’s ethical order because it rejects God’s unconditional love for all of us; for all his children.
An ancient Accuser that has harassed humans since in the beginning. Declaring fibs, falsity and flattery as we are led into temptation to take what doesn’t belong to us. Evil wrongly reassuring us to choose what we desire, as opposed to trusting in God’s desire that we rule the world according to His law of love and His gospel of peace.
The citizens of the wealthiest empire in history are not alright, neither are the kids of America. As adults we are physically ill, mentally unhealthy, and spiritually starved; it’s even worse for our children. Our government and institutions have failed us. This not a partisan problem but a people problem. A people problem of values, a choice of culture.
Dishonesties, deceits and deceptions that our government and institutions tell us because they benefit financially, or they increase their temporal power. Conflicts of interest that are hidden because only lies can live in darkness. Corrupt tongues spinning language to manipulate and divide one another.
It’s we the people, who elect people who make self-interested choices. Choosing wealth, influence, status and power as opposed to love. Doing unto their neighbor terrible things because they benefit from their actions. Actions that are never about love of neighbor, but always about a self-serving love of self.
As autumn closes in, I’ve often asked myself why was I so self-destructive earlier in my life? Why did I choose unhealthy actions that only harmed me and other people? Why did I chase stuff that only enslaved me to more stuff? Why did I circumvent God’s love for me? Did the Devil really make me do it?
Instead of filling my heart with Love, I filled it with self-serving self-pride. Stuff and status are the signs of success in our culture, and they became my values; my culture; my faith. Even though I was raised in a loving Christian home, I abandoned God and avoided God’s love for me. Mutters of Evil infecting my heart; murmurs of Evil infecting our culture.
This spiritual Evil infecting my life, would ultimately succumb and shrivel to the authority of Love. Committing my heart to the Lord of Life not the Demon of Death. Repentant, redeemed and rescued only through God’s gracious grace. Love overcoming death because Love generates all life.
My past is done, my future is yet determined, but my now needs to be decided. Awakened from my spiritual stupor, I’m examining my role and my responsibility in creating and supporting a culture that’s not about Love, but all about lies. An eternal and everyday choice every human must make.
Judgments of others is easy, particularly with the anonymity and animosity of social media. Nothing is really required of us. Fake sentiment and faceless emojis rewarding our ego. Virtue signaling that’s cheap because it’s easy, like taking the broad road.
Even as I walk the narrow path, I’m still tempted to join the busy highway. But I’ve already gone down that road to nowhere and I know where that will lead me. It ain’t Love, it’s destruction and death. It ain’t God and it ain’t good, even if it’s wide and well worn.
Because my life’s compass is now oriented towards the Divine not the Deceiver, love is my NorthStar. Love is my ethic. Love will help me find the small gate and stay on the narrow road, even when I detour or become momentarily lost. God is always with me, and God is always with you. God is the Way.