I'd like to start this post with a song:
I was left to my own devices.
Many days fell away with nothing to show.
... But if you close your eyes Does it almost feel like nothing changed at all? And if you close your eyes Does it almost feel like you've been here before? How am I gonna be an optimist about this? How am I gonna be an optimist about this?
We were caught up and lost in all of our vices In your pose as the dust settled around us
Eh-oh, eh-oh Eh-eh-oh, eh-oh Eh-eh-oh, eh-oh Eh-eh-oh, eh-oh
Oh, where do we begin? The rubble or our sins?
The rough draft of this post got erased somehow...I guess I shouldn't leave things on this site...
So starting over from scratch, what would be a good thing to write about?
I know that my original point was how well this song describes us now. I mean us in the Western World.
You know it's funny how much depression runs rampant in our cultures, considering we have more benefits than we ever have.
But that's actually something we have in common with animals.
A study was done on rats, where they were given everything they needed, all the time, never had to work for it.
The rats developed depression, as well as other unhealthy habits, for rats...and for humans.
But you might see the same thing with dogs. They're bred for work, and when they're kept as pets but not exercised properly or given any tasks to do, they will also get depressed.
And so do humans.
This life of staring at screens and working from home, and not getting outside and having to really work to solve problems that many of us have is making us depressed. We feel like we have no meaning, because there is no effort.
We don't have to be fighting for survival, to feel accomplished, any creative goal can help, but most especially if it's necessary.
I know each generation has its issues with how the younger one has it easier and isn't disciplined.
I do think there's some truth in that, though. Even I feel less invested in homework assignments since I had to do them digitally, and it's just a little too easy now. I know it doesn't prove I'm smart now, if I succeed, it just proves I knew what the teacher wanted. Many times I could have done way more if left to my own devices.
But the education system encourages me not to be creative, because my grade will suffer if I don't meet the exact requirements of the assignment. Ever get in trouble for going over the page limit? Yeah...
But anyway, my point is, we don't have to really work. There are people who do, but the ones who are the face and voice of our culture don't.
And that is every race, gender, and whatever else.
i think that's part of the reason we spend so much time fighting each other, really. While history shows people would fight each other no matter what, it doesn't help that we really have all the time in the world to do it now, instead of having to set aside time to go to war.
All this has got me to thinking.
About how few people under 30 even know history now, they really don't know that much period. Not science, or religion, or how people work.
You have your outliers, like my cousin, who like to do their own research, but they're not the majority.
Not that this is unusual, in pampered societies, it's pretty normal, actually...and then they crumble.
That's what the song Pompeii is about, really. How when we're left to ourselves, to follow our own whims, we get buried in our sins, until disaster strikes, and freezes us that way forever.
And how can you be an optimist about this? When there is only one outcome ever to societies in moral decay like that.
"In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes." (Judges 21:25, 17:6)
Both those instance talk about someone doing something pretty stupid and wrong. And also it says:
"Be not wise in your own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil." (Proverbs 3:7)
We are wise in our own eyes now aren't we?
Like all this prattle about not getting married and staying single that I wrote about before. What is that but being wise in our own eyes.
And we don't seem to care what generations of humans before us said or thought. We've got it figued out now.
I mean because with zero experience, zero study, and only the corrupt examples of current culture to go by, clearly we're well informed on these issues.
But the depression of this age has gone so far now, that a lot of kids don't even care anymore if they're right.
Case in point, just yesterday, I was in YT comment thread with someone who said that truth doesn't matter tot ehm.
I was asking them why they bothered to watch the whole video of a debate if they didn't care about the truth or what was right.
I got no answer to that so far. I probably never will.
At this point, admitting you hunger for a definitive truth is like a weakness to our relativistic young people--and some older people also.
Of course the dismissive attitude of older people isn't helping.
I mean, who let the kids watch PBS and Disney Channel and Cartoon network? I noticed the bad messages of those channels when I was a kid. I'm not surprised the people who never questioned it have now swallowed it hook line and sinker.
I mean, you take a whole show like Dora the Explorer, and you go on a quest through a fake map, looking fora fake item, learn a few Spanish words...and you call that exploring?
Nothing against Dora personally, it's an okay show for entertainment--but it's not really educational. And it's not even the worst one.
It's hard to blame the young, they're just doing what they were taught to do, and by the time they realize it wasn't right, they'll have a lot of regrets.
Still we have our own responsibility. And they do choose not to think, not to try, not to explore for real. And that's on them.
I bring all this up, but do I have a solution?
I think the solution is the same as it's always been.
Person by person, the only thing to do is try to get people to understand the condition they'er in.
Debate isn't always the best way to do that, I admit. Though it works for some.
I've had most people just duck out of arguments when they realized I was going to win because I was better informed than them, or just straight up insult me.
But people can't always be so quick to dismiss if you touch them on a personal level.
We need both.
But it's hard, there's so few people fighting these battles compared to the people who are casualties in them.
But that's how it usually goes. We preserve a remnant of the people. The majority of them don't want to be helped.
Some will literally say so, I have grandparents who would say that.
We love our sin so much.
We love being able to do what we wnat.
And now it's not a secret, you'd even hear it hailed from the streets and the theaters and political campaigns that we'd rather die doing what we'd prefer to do, right or wrong, then live submitting to God's will.
I saw this comment today, it was like this: I don't believe in God because there's nothing about same sex relationship in the bible and He's not okay with them.
First: There's actually plenty about homosexuality in the Bible, Sodom and Gomorrah, the books of the Law, and Romans 1 all talk about it. (It's called Sodomy in the old Testament)
Second: I find that these types of objections completely misunderstand the nature of God's existence.
You see, if God exists does not depend on our personal preferences. He either does, or He doesn't.
If He does exist, He is the final say on what is right and wrong. You, as His creation, don't get an opinion.
Sure, against other humans, you do. But not against God. If God was in front of you and He told you, that would be the last word. And if you saw God, in His Glory, the last thing you would dream of doing is arguing with Him.
See, the point of contention is not if God supports what we feel is right.
If God is the Reality, then that is the reality we have to deal with. Even if He was the bloodthirsty God of many religions, cruel and spiteful, which would be bad for us. But it would be Reality, there'd be nothing we can do about it.
Thankfully, God is not like that. But He's still unchangeable. Your preferences donesn't come into it.
You may not like it....and God has never said we have to like doing what He says...but He does say we need to do it.
As a Christian, I do find that the rewards of serving God is that if you do it long enough, you will start to like it, and then eventually, you won't be able to do without it. But that's sort of an insider bonus. The bible promises that one day everyone will have to submit to God's will, whether they like it or not.
It's a bit like Gravity. Many of us wish we could fly, and though we can sort of, using machines, we have to borrow that from things God made that can defy gravity, we ourselves can't defy gravity more than a few feet in the air before it yanks us back down.
In the same way, we can't defy God's design for very far in our moral lives. Maybe if we had the "help" from the devil, we can go farther...gross.
But that's short lived, and on our own, the consequences of our actions will always pull us back down to the ground eventually.
Christians believe that one day God will set us free form the law of Gravity, just as one day, we don't need the Law of morality anymore...because we'll become things that don't need gravity, and things that don't need law. We'll have a new nature.
Like a caterpillar turns into a butterfly.
But until then, this is what we've got. We have to work with it.
I'm not an optimist about Mans' ability to fix this world. I think we're as doomed as Pompeii.
But I always knew that.
But I still have hope. I hope in God's ability to always save some people, as He promises to do. And in that hope, we keep trying to be a part of that.
I think that's about all for now.
Until next time, stay honest--Natasha.
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