Tuesday, 17 May 2016

1 John 2.15-17

Do not love the world, or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world - the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life - comes not from the Father, but from the world. The world and its desires will pass away but the one who does the will of God will live forever.

The world superimposes its desires on us. We are bombarded from every angle. Told what we need to be and who we need to be to be loveable, valuable, meaningful.

To love the world is to succumb to its value system. To buy into the lie that pursuing its agenda will bring happiness. What parts of that lie do I believe? Where am I wooed and won over by the voices of culture? What things of the world do I crave? Success. Approval. Skinniness. An impressive CV. Status. Or simply the need for other people's opinions towards me to be favorable. The need to be told repeatedly that I am doing OK. The need to have some magical box ticked that tells me I pass some mysterious test that I don't understand and don't want to sit.

But there is an alternative: Tell the world where to go with its persuasions and manipulations. Screw it. Scrap it. Stick it to the man and the system. And live forever instead.

Trip Lee, New Dreams

Even the sun goes down, heroes die eventually
Great careers end in the industry
Empires implode; you may go down in history
But everything will go down eventually
Look, you can stack bread, but you can't stop death
And there will be no comforter for you in that bed

We all get laid out, the games get played out
In a maze headed to the grave, and there's no way out
You can't outlast life, it fades out fast
Death is coming for us all, everything's gonna pass
So look at it from that angle down
My dreams gotta be bigger and greater than that

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