I spent the past weekend seeing a close friend of mine and talking to him about certain things that has been an anvil chained to his ankle in keeping him stuck, drowning in his own misery. Well, I think more than misery, it’s his own self conceived notion of having dug for himself a hole so deep it’s not possible to climb back out without a rope in the form of winning the damn lottery. The false hope, and living for this fallacy is entirely why his life is in its current state of descension to begin with.....Pretty meaningless if you ask me now, the thought of living strictly for material wishes, but on second thought, considering where my mindset used to be, I feel where his hopeless sentiments come from. However, blaming your upbringing or the finances of the parents for your current state of being unproductive is a practice that's coincedentally, unproductive in itself.
When you dig yourself into a hole, I think it’s just human nature to stare at the shovel and blame the tools that became available for you to dig, not opting to stare, at your own two wicked hands and even more, looking at yourself in the mirror, pointing the index finger on the sinful nature of your own heart in appeasing your own selfishness and for lacking the discipline to live beyond the present. You dig, not thinking about the deeper you dig the harder it will be for you to jump or climb out, but because you want to dig, you just dig not giving a damn. You can’t blame the gun, if you’re the one that pulled the trigger.
This is why God’s concept of free will becomes so hotly debated I think.....
Why does he give us the choice to begin with? Why did he place the apple there if he didn’t want us eating it? Anyways, before I start to digress anymore, my personal 2 cents on this is if you want someone to love you truly, you need to give that person a choice, otherwise that love becomes subjective.
Towards the end of the night, he was willing to concede the fact that he has a tendency to in fact, constantly shoot himself in the foot. He’s sorry, yet, he never seems to be able to escape from this habit of self destruction. (we all do, but there’s a difference)
It’s not easy to wait out your struggles of wanting to do whatever the hell you want, eating whatever the hell you want, smoking whatever the hell you want, and screwing whoever the hell you want. It’s a smile now, cry later mindset that I use to be a victim of as well. “F it”, used to be the theme behind my impulses.
I used to screw myself over with my “F it” attitude constantly, I still do.
Case in point, last Saturday night, after playing basketball so hard that my legs would tremble walking up my stairs, I went to choir practice. I was going to go home early, take my magic pills and wake up refreshed to do “ma thang” at church the following day. I get a phone call from one of “da homies” that you just have to come through for and I just say F it. I knew in the back of my mind, I don’t want to either drive 20 miles to go pick his ass up nor go place myself in an environment where I’m almost guaranteed to lose my self control via under the influence of the juice in the green bottle, but here I am sitting, back in Ktown watching over my shoulders, feeling shamed in being at a place where I can lose my cool in a split second or run into one of the young people I used to give fellowship to or even an old enemy from my past. But as the saying in Proverbs go, a dog will return to his own vomit….(by the way, I saw someone affiliated with my church at this place, I don’t think he recognized me, but damn….)
Proverbs 26:11 (New King James Version)
11 As a dog returns to his own vomit,
So a fool repeats his folly.
As I sat there and listened to his own misconceived philosophy on life, it was quite annoying to see those around me still living believing in life as dictated by one world, and not seeing the possibilities of what I testify to him, of a different world, a world where you hope in things not seen but felt. He actually called me a freak for continuously using the term, “worldly sense”, and that if I believe this notion of black and white without a gray area in between, then I am literally, in fact, a freak.
There’s nothing outrageous about what I told him, maybe a bit philosophical but really, it’s simply what’s stated in the bible. There’s a black and there is a white. It’s not about whether you fall indulgent to your natural inclinations to be self centered in all your ways and thoughts. It’s about where your heart is as I seem to always point out in all of my posts. The deeds you will yourself to do or not do isn’t what places you in the white or the black, if it was, there still wouldn’t be a gray, we would all be in the black. (okay, maybe Mother Teresa, Ghandi and that guy who burnt himself alive in Vietnam….)
My friend still thinks he’s not all that bad, that he has a good heart, that because he wouldn’t hit a girl he should be generally considered a decent human being. But this is what I mean when I say debauchery, it’s not true, the very standard he’s measuring himself against is in itself not decent. As a Christian, we have the words of God that we can measure ourselves against and it becomes quite obvious where we stand. Only by the blood of Christ we are called righteous, but aside of having accepted this in our hearts, we fail, we're in fact, NOT good, i don't have to beat up a girl to realize I'm a selfish, prideful, lustful, violent person by nature. Don’t front. We all lie, we all think and do for the most part, as we please and to say that you don’t is a debauchery within the context of being a christian, which is what he proclaims himself to be.
I just want to remind myself that I have a choice. I can smile now and cry later in torment and in eternity, or I can cry now and smile later in heavenly bliss…..forever.
I hope I don't sound like a condescending prick on my posts.....I love my friend, we know everything about each other pretty much, but i hope he finds God in his life.
God Bless.
Brother Jimmy
again, hope...is not in me....it's in YOU. In You. it's in you.
