I defend my disease. I defend my life. I defend myself. I defend my clothes, my car, the fact that I live at home, why I don't go to school, why I don't have a job. I defend everything to everyone. And as I realize I do this I realize I feel completely misunderstood. I feel like no one knows the real me or "gets" the real me. They know who they think I am, or rather who I used to be, but I am not her anymore. They don't know me. They don't understand why I am different. They don't understand how I could be different. They don't understand why I do what I do or don't do what everyone else does. Actually no one knows what I do anymore. They have no idea.
I feel I am personally unable to completely relate to anyone else. I feel I spiritually am unable to relate to anyone else. I don't know anyone, I literally can't think of anyone, besides a few Christian authors, who think like me. I don't know anyone personally, directly, a family member or a friend, who lives and thinks like me, and thus I defend my actions and who I am because I feel attacked by those of a different mind or lifestyle than me. Don't you feel that? Don't you feel attacked?
You too, you do defend yourself too; I am just not sure you realize it yet. Since I am fully, painfully, terribly aware of it however, I have been laboring my thoughts over whether or not defending my Christian life is necessary, or wondering what does this mean. There are just two quotes playing past the eyes of my mind and heart:
"They steadfastly believe that they will share His triumph, and for this reason they are perfectly willing to share His rejection by a society that does not understand them." -Keys To The Deeper Life, A.W. Tozer page 43
"You have already put in your time in that God-ignorant way of life...Now it's time to be done with it for good. Of course, your old friends don't understand why you don't join in with the old gang anymore. But you don't have to give an account to them." -1 Peter 4:3-5, The Message
We defend ourselves like we are playing a game, like we truly do live the Lifeboat Theory that Donald Miller talks about, like we are trying to win. But there is nothing to win. There really isn't. If there is, please tell me what it is, I would love to know. Seriously, what are you trying to win? Love, friends, happiness, money, security, fame, success? What do you want to win? Are those things you need, need from this world? Is that where they come from? Do you think you will ever win them...and hold on to them, keep them? Or can you lose them again?
I don't have to win you over. Over to my side or whatever. There is no logic behind defending myself and my way of living. There is just living. Life is just this, living. Nothing more. We aren't arguing. You are not attacking me. You are not on the offensive, are you? I mean if there is no offense, if life isn't a game, who needs defense anyway? Devil's Confusion. Man he's good. We are so busy defending ourselves we forget to just live life, game free, winning free, offense free, defense free. Life is just life. Life is just living. Are you living, or are you playing a game? Which do you think life really is or is supposed to be? Have you even asked yourself these questions and labored over a truthful answer?
I have. And I honestly believe life isn't a game. There is nothing to win. Among people there are not teams, no one is or should be on the offensive or on the defensive. If you are going to look at someone or something on the offensive fighting against you, it isn't your fellow man, it is the devil. And maybe if for five seconds we stopped gaming with each other, waring with each other, with other flesh and bone, and started fighting the devil, this world would feel less like a game, and more like life, the gift of life, like living.
"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." -Ephesians 6:12
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