The World says: fit or else.
Why do you feel trapped? What is it that keeps you from breaking the bond of social machinery and doing one wonderful thing that everything in you says to do? That one thing is likely God’s will for your life. What keeps you from doing it?
“The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?”
John Lennon
I know this is a stretch, but I propose that the apostle Paul and John Lennon have a lot in common. The major difference is that Paul offers a solution to the world system, or the ‘society-making-us-pressurized’, by recognizing Gods will.
So it’s easier to smoke a joint. I admit it. Take a toke and everything is fine. At least for the next 15 minutes it is. But unless you stay high, the world system tumbles back in on you and crushes you with unbearable weight. If you don’t identify Gods will, you will be crushed. You can sedate it with some psychotropic exit plan or simply check out in a haze of disappointment and bitterness. That’s what I call normal. Or you can take the hand of the man who changed water to wine and learn to love life.
“And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”
Paul the apostle, Romans 12:1-2
It’s funny to me that the World we conform to, the World that kills our dreams and makes us fearful of risk, gets our intense loyalty. We give ourselves to the World and we get back what the World gives: nothing deeper than rearranged atomic particles that take shape in the form of a pad, pod, auto, or wallpaper texture.
Transformed: That’s the key.
And what when we get it?
Please, if this touches you, go and ask the next wealthy person you meet what makes him or her get up in the morning. Please do it! The ones I have asked have never answered that it is to get the World’s stuff, but to live a life of meaningful adventure – even if for one moment. That’s what we were built for and it’s what we all run into one way or another.
Some days I would like to hit 5th in a Ferrari on a coastal highway. I would like to smoke a joint and gain a few minutes of freedom. But then I remind myself that the joy I seek is mine here and now. I only need a change of mind to get it back. I need to be “transformed” and stop viewing the World as my cage.
The World is a defeated enemy. Normal is over friends.
To risk all for the adventure that only God can bring is the greatest treasure I’ve received. I look back on my life and see most everyone I know traveling the crowded path and I think I would have died there. I want what only God can give me; the world’s attractions are so tarnished.