Fear to Freedom – Holy Triage

Life is dynamic meaning spirituality looks different from the vantage point of each individual life. People think they can create a one size fits all spirituality, but that is actually religion not spirituality. The very fact that our lives are all different means we all take different paths… we are the path… our life is the narrow road. Do any two people see God the same? Do any two people see Christ the same? No matter what we "believe" it has been shaped by our own individual perception via life experience. The Christ I know today will transform into a completely different Christ as I grow spiritually, therefore each individual's perception is truly the road or the way… our lives are far too distinct to narrow it down to the so-called "one-way" mentality. Where does God or Christ truly exist… they live in our perception and our perception changes with time. Everything we know about God is in our perception therefore as our perception changes God changes. Anyone who tells you psychology is irrelevant to spirituality needs to realize our psychology is the lens with which we view God.

Unfortunately evangelism is just selling a religion like a household product. People talk about their religious product in ways that makes it the solution to all problems. People will even sell their particular church like a product. If I only had a dollar for every time a person said "MY CHURCH IS NOT LIKE OTHER CHURCHES". Too often the institutional church experience is like the various forms of medical marijuana that those clinics offer. One church makes you feel warm and fuzzy while another church scares you straight. All too often churches that people choose are more about finding a good fit for their personality then they are about truth. When the churches people attend have to fit their image… well… that says it all. Now we got people going to those fancy churches built like resorts with lot of amenities designed so we can impress our friends. Here is the truth sometimes a person's religion is the symptom of a deep psychological problem… I know it was for me anyway.

There are people in this world called sociopaths or pathological liars. A sociopath is a person who turns life into their own fantasy. Sociopaths recreate them self as a character in their own story and they freely construct elaborate lies to reinforce their story. Sociopaths are afraid of the truth so they shelter themselves inside a story. An extreme sociopath is a person who begins to believe their own story and they feel justified in lying to preserve the bases of their story. Today I am going to write about a form of sociopath behavior called institutionalism. Lets look deeper into the causes behind this sociopath behavior called institutionalism…

What happens when a Christian feels obligated to God? What happens when a wife feels obligated to her husband? What happens when a husband feels obligated to his wife? What happens when a child feels like a grade? What happens when an employee feels like a slave? What happens when life feels like a performance, when everything and everyone around you become the props? What does it mean when your passion is gone and you’ve lost touch with both your own humanity and the humanity of others? What does it mean when every day feels the same… that is if you can even still feel? What happens when a woman stays married only because she has no other place to go or no other way to provide for herself? What happens when a man stays married out of guilt, obligation or because the price of marriage is cheaper then the price of divorce? What happens when you go to a building called a church because you have to go and not because you want to go? What happens when life starts to get so cold that your longing for warmth becomes all consuming? What happens when your love for yourself begins to overcome your misery? What happens when your fear of losing everything is overcome by your fear of never finding true love? It has been said in order to win we must be willing to lose. In order to succeed we must be willing to fail. To find our life we must refuse to play it safe. Safe is not fun. Safe is not passionate. There is nothing romantic in playing life safe. Institutionalism is a form of sociopath behavior where playing it safe or feeling stuck leads to living a lie.

Now here is the truth… we all have felt stuck and will feel stuck many times through-out our lives. Life was never meant to be institutionalized and yet many have turned life itself into one big institution. We work because we have to, stay married because we have to and go to church because we have to. I personally believe that love and obligation are mortal enemies, but institutionalism attempts to merge love and obligation. What if life had no strings attached? What if freedom was just a decision? What if a husband and wife were held together by passion, not obligation? What if you could get a new job doing something you enjoyed, so that you didn’t feel like a slave? What if college isn’t for everyone and what if I told you that some of the wealthiest people in the world never graduated from college? If you are feeling stuck then why don’t you look your fears dead in the eyes or at least have the courage to open your eyes? It is surprisingly obvious when a person has lost their passion for you. It is obvious when your boss doesn’t see you the same anymore. It is obvious when you are failing at something or wasting your time? Time is precious, so why would you want a lie built upon obligation instead of a life built upon passion? Why would a person live a lie married to a person they don’t really love or stay married to a person who doesn’t really love them? Why would you want to waste your life in a dead end job or a job that makes you feel dead? Why would you want to keep banging your head against the wall over and over again? If you fail to reveal the truth on your terms eventually the truth will be revealed on its own terms. If you fail to use the truth to set yourself free you will live a lie not a life. We have two choices we can fall on the truth or the truth will fall down upon us. We will either empower ourselves with the truth or the truth will crush us. Why? because the truth is unstoppable.

To be enlightened is to become the truth. The truth flows like water. We must live like water and learn to flow. When water sits in the same place too long it becomes smelly, rotten and it stagnates. What if freedom was just a choice? What if you could be married to a person who truly loved you or be with a person that you truly loved? What if you could make money doing something you enjoyed and even without a college degree? I am realizing more then ever before in my own life that I am never stuck. Today I continue to make the decisions required to live in freedom. I have become an observer of truth. Observation leads to questioning and questioning leads to the truth and truth leads to freedom. I believe life is a journey to freedom that begins the day we are born. All of us have the freedom to make choices that lead to love. I am here today to tell you that you are never stuck. If each day you wake up next to a person you don’t love or next to a person who doesn’t love you, make a change because you both deserve better. You deserve better then to live in fear. You are not obligated to a sovereign God. You deserve better then a dead end job. Quit identifying with what you do. You are not a maid, a paycheck or a grade. You always have a choice and the second that you deny yourself a choice… that very second you have become institutionalized. Love is not a “have to”… love is a “want to”. Love and obligation are mortal enemies that when combined produce institutionalism. Institutionalism is a cold passionless existence, spent going through the motions. Institutionalism is living without being fully alive. If you want to play it safe in life then prepare for a cold, passionless life of obligation. If you want to be free then start questioning everything that is cold and passionless in your life. You deserve better. Time is precious, so why would you want a “lie” built upon obligation instead of a “life” built upon passion?

I love people and I hate fear. When I see people gripped by fear it breaks my heart. Here-in lies a problem because fear and false religious doctrines are often interlocked. How can one trying to eliminate fear not appear as a troublemaker when he challenges fear based doctrines? If our lives are founded upon love then love demands that we be troublemakers at times. I am not doing this for money or attention I am doing this for love. I don’t go to church and I am not selling anything. What I am trying to do is rid the world of fear and you can join me in this fight. If you think deeply it is not hard to realize that fear is behind every religion and every war we have ever fought making fear responsible for the deaths of millions of people. When a person commits suicide it is often because their fear of death is overcome by their fear of life. Nearly every psychological dysfunction is rooted in fear. The more I have meditated upon fear the more determined I become to rid the world of fear. Why don’t you join me on this mission… the first step is restoring your own childlike faith and ridding your own life of fear. Once you rid your own life of fear it immediately begins to benefit your spouse and it will literally transform the future of your children. After you see how eliminating fear helps your family you will soon begin to see how it helps other things like your relationships and your career. The elimination of fear makes it easier to both love and receive love and so you as a person will become more lovable. All this starts when you begin to love yourself so much that you no longer tolerate fear in your life. Maybe it starts when someone loves you enough to send you a note just like this note. OK, so let the battle begin. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. If you are reading this it is because I love you…

Last night memories of my past were brought to the surface briefly when I drove past a bunch of religious people holding signs that said repent on the corner of a busy intersection. I used to be a person who handed out Bible tracts to random people on street corners. I used to tell people that Jesus loves them. I used to pride myself on how many people I evangelized each day. I actually grew a public high school Bible study to around 40 kids when I was only 17 years old. I spent at least four nights a week at church then another 2 nights a week on street corners evangelizing people. I spent about 6 years of my life being called an on fire Christian, and then I spent the next couple years attending a Bible college until I graduated. Now in this present moment I am trying to make sense of the 8 years of my life spent being gripped by religion.

In 1990 I actually had a reverse conversion experience prior to attending a small Bible college. At 18 years old I went from an on fire Christian to feeling there was something missing in my life. I told my parents that I was afraid that my heart was drifting and asked them to force me to go to Bible College in the event that I changed my mind. I started going to night clubs where the lights, the beautiful women and the music felt like a piece of Heaven to me. At that point the youth pastor told me that I had to make a choice between being a high school counselor and dancing. The youth pastor said the head pastor was against dancing and therefore he also had to be against dancing (under his breath he confessed that he would have dancing at his wedding). I looked the youth pastor in the eyes and said I choose dancing because I don’t care about the title of being a high school counselor. When I look back I am thankful for this youth pastor because he triggered the anger that freed me from religion.

As I attended Bible College I started questioning everything I believed. By the time I graduated from Bible College in 1992 I was convinced the institutional church was evil. I began writing rebuking articles directed at the church back then of which I still possess. For the first time in my life I felt free inside and out. Over the course of the next 3 years I went out dancing, drinking and truly living from my heart. For the first time in my life I wasn’t living to please God or others and it was absolutely exhilarating. In the midst of this freedom I found true love that replaced the counterfeit love of the church. Every past Christian friend I had easily forgot I even existed. As the many Christian friends I once had refused to reach out to me it became apparent that these friendships were not real. The results of questioning everything I believed actually awakened me from the deep trance of religion. My questioning revealed the difference between truth and lie, friend and foe. Even now as I write this note I am still giving myself new freedoms to question, so many things. Thanks to backsliding I met my wife, I decided not to waste my life playing pastor and on this day I don’t answer to God or people, instead only love is my judge.

When I look back on what I used to believe I laugh. I used to believe that God was an advocate of human sacrifice. I used to call a book that approved of racism, sexism, genocide and slavery the word of God. I used to believe that I was put on this earth to perform like a circus monkey for God to get God to throw me peanuts based on my performance. I used to completely discount science calling it an attempt to eliminate the existence of God. My religious behavior was just me trying to convince myself that I was better then everybody else. Christianity was only a cheap attempt to believe I was somebody because deep inside I believed I was nobody. I embraced religion like some sort of drug to feel better about myself and just like all other addictive substances the artificial high kept wearing off. Christianity was my drug of choice and the institutional church was like a drug pusher that sent me out to evangelize. A drug pusher tries to get you addicted, so you have to keep coming back for more. A drug pusher tries to get you indebted, so you too have to become a drug dealer to in order to pay for your expensive habit. The institutional church makes you feel indebted to God by telling you you’re a sinner over and over again. The institutional church is guilty of creating an abusive God who is a monster that demands blood to appease Him. I recently watched a documentary that traced the religious practice of human sacrifice back to a day long before Judaism even existed. The Jews actually stole the idea of blood sacrifice from the belief systems that existed long before Judaism. Judaism is guilty of embracing the angry God of the pagans that existed for thousands of years before Judaism. Today the very idea of God demanding a human sacrifice sounds so primitive and yet many people embrace this brutal idea.

Some at this point will ask me what I believe about Jesus. Jesus was hailed by three wise men from the east who were not Jews and Christianity did not even exist yet. Who were the three wise men guided to Jesus by their practice of Astrology? When I open my heart to the truth it has become apparent that Jesus was a spiritually enlighten teacher who was exploited by religion. I believe that Jesus was a martyr for the truth. I believe in the wisdom of Jesus, I even believe Jesus was the truth incarnate. Was Jesus the only individual that existed through-out history who was the truth incarnate? NO! Even Jesus points to John the Baptist as Elijah reborn. Now this brings me back to the beginning of this article. Remember when I mentioned the religious people on the corner holding the repent signs? When John the Baptist cried out repent, it was not in a religious way. Even baptism was originally a pagan practice hijacked by the religion of Judaism. John the Baptist was actually speaking out against traditional temple Judaism. Matthew 3:7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Why did both John the Baptist and Jesus come? The Kingdom of God was hijacked by religion and John and Jesus came to take the Kingdom of God back by force. Matthew 11:12 From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it. Jesus own words declare that the kingdom of God can be raided by force or by religion. Today the institutional church is exploiting Jesus via religion and attempting a monopoly on the kingdom of God. If we want to be like Jesus then we need to refuse to be enslaved by any and all religious institutions… even if it gets us crucified.

In order to keep our freedoms from destroying us we need two characteristics, which are courage and respect. Let’s say you had a car that could go real fast, so fast that you bragged about it to all your friends. What if you lacked experience driving a fast car, but in a lack of respect for its speed you insisted on driving it? What if you lacked the courage to drive it and kept it parked in your driveway? OK… Here is another example: What if you were incredibly knowledgeable, but lacked the courage to look for a job that fully utilized your knowledge? What if you just graduated with a master’s degree YET without any respect for experience started interviewing for management positions? Freedom without respect is knowledge without wisdom (experience). Freedom without courage is the fear of potential.

Everything destructive in our world is born out of freedom that lacks control. Freedom means access and access often leads to trouble or living in fear of trouble. In today’s society we have free & easy access to so many things. Where freedoms increase responsibility must follow or freedom itself becomes destructive. In today’s society people have easy access to both drugs and doctors. Our doctors are rewarded for over-prescribing medication. What if I gave my 5 year old child an unlimited supply of candy? Our prisons are full of people who took freedom too far. We are free to desire material goods, but to steal is wrong. We are free to be angry at a person, but to murder them is wrong. We are free to admire a woman, but to rape her in your heart or in reality is wrong. I challenge you to find one harmful thing that is not freedom taken too far. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Just because we want to do something doesn’t make it right.

Some dysfunctions are born out of the fear of freedom. Think about fear and how freedom can actually fuel fear. Our freedom to love can create the fear of love. Our freedom to fly can create a fear of heights. Most people have a subconscious fear of their own potential. Our freedom causes the greatest harm when we use our freedom to run from reality. Think about all the dysfunctions linked to the fear of freedom. Dysfunctions linked to freedom are the fear of intimacy, the fear of commitment and the fear of being wrong (living in denial). Jealousy is the fear of giving someone the freedom not to love us. An introvert may fear the freedom to connect, while an extrovert may fear the freedom of solitude. Many people addicted to substances have a deep seated fear of reality (fear of the light). Some people get lost in the freedom to search for reality (fear of the dark).

Many of the same dysfunctions can be born out of both the abuse of freedom and the fear of freedom. A workaholic could be abusing freedom by loving money and materialism to a point where it becomes damaging. YET a workaholic could also be afraid that the freedom to rest may lead to poverty. Greed is a form of fear. All and all we need to learn that we cannot abuse or fear freedom without harming others. All addictive behavior is born out of the abuse of freedom or the fear of freedom. Abusing freedom leads to eat leads some to obesity and the fear of this freedom leads others to anorexia. The freedom to lust leads some to be promiscuous and others to fear sex all together. Abusing freedom leads some to laziness and others to fear laziness ultimately becoming workaholics. Our freedom gives us the ability to either destroy ourselves or build ourselves up. Freedom is by far nothing to brag about because without control we walk a dark path that will inevitably lead us to crash and burn. When we harm ourselves we hurt both those who love us and those who don’t even know us. Freedom puts some behind the wheel of a car while intoxicated as in an out of control person can lead to an out of control car.

In conclusion, I have to ask where do we find the balance on the scale of freedom? It has to be true love that leads us to respect freedom without fearing freedom. True love gives us the courage to exercise freedom without abusing freedom. YET when our freedoms generate fear in others will often lead them to persecute us or avoid us. For example if a person fears the freedom to question reality… then our questioning of reality will make them uncomfortable. This is why all extreme positions in politics and religion are rooted in the fear of freedom. Freedom needs to be respected, but never feared. When we fear the freedom to look outside the box, we become the prey of various political or religious institutions that seek to control us. A religious or political cult is simply an institution that discourages you from looking outside their box.

I leave you with self challenging questions:

How has your fear of freedom cause destruction in your life?

How has your fear of freedom caused destruction in others lives?

How has your abuse of freedom caused destruction in your life?

How has your abuse of freedom caused destruction in others lives?

Sometimes I allow my mind to deeply contemplate or meditate on different subjects and last night’s subject was human value. As I went to bed my mind took me down a rabbit hole filled with all sorts of emotion. I embraced a sense of powerlessness as I contemplated human value and how it’s measured only to realize the fragility of mankind. I woke up at 2AM thinking more about human value. I finally surrendered to the idea of sleeping, got out of bed and recorded the following thoughts. As I contemplated human value I found myself embracing bitterness and great despair, but I let my mind go on the following journey…

Where is our value as humans? Is our value in our work? Many people have been laid off over the last couple of years and told they no longer are needed by their employer. Is our value in our appearance? All of us are aging and in time will lose that youthful appearance. Less attractive people tend to be discriminated against by potential employers or less often considered as a potential mate in the dating world. Is our value in our net worth? In today’s economy people aren’t worth nearly as much as they used to be. Is our value in our marriage? Lately I have watched most of my friend’s marriages fall apart. Is our value in our relationships? In my life I have watched friends come and go. I have lots of friends that amount to infrequent and distant encounters with virtually zero intimacy. Is our value in being a parent? One day our children will grow up and have their own family’s needs to attend to. Is our value in our education? As technology rapidly advances in today’s world it is easy to fall behind on our education. Is our value in our health? All of us are terminally ill and when I watched my mother die of cancer 4 ½ years ago I saw all her dreams die with her. Is our value in our youth? I have watched both men and women endure destructive midlife crisis as they attempt to feel young again. Is our value in religion? I have seen religions eat people up and spit them out.

To see where a person places their value one must only look closely at that person. I have known people who talk excessively about their business. I have known people who talk excessively about their wealth or their prospective success. I have known people who constantly look in the mirror obsessing about their appearance. I have seen married couples call each other pet names and they are either obsessed with each other or they are putting on a good show. I have watched people spend countless hours on the road neglecting their families in the name of their job security which gives them a sense of value. I have seen people go back to school as the economy has stirred up their insecurities and many drop out. I know people who spend hours toning their bodies to feel a sense of pride about both their health and physique. I have seen people who build their Facebook friends lists and some place high value on their thousands of friends. I have related to people who put on the mask of religion. I have been guilty of placing value in many of these ideals, but recently I have seen more then ever how these ideals are just a fragile illusion.

What if tomorrow I became a crippled, poor person who could no longer work or generate any sort of income? What if I got sick enough to be miserable, but not sick enough to die? What if I lost my edge in the career world and didn’t have what it took to go back to college? What would happen to my marriage, my friends and my life? I can say with all certainty that sometimes I just don’t know what is real anymore. Life is starting to feel more and more like a dream to me because lately I have seen so much so-called value blow up in people’s faces. I guess the only way to know true value vs. an illusion is when we lose everything. Like Jesus said “to find our lives we must lose them”. If I lost all the things that I believe make me a valuable person who and what would be left? If I could no longer work, generate an income or be a resource for others then what would be left of my life? The only way find out what is real is to lose the illusion only to find reality in the process.

This loss of value really happens in our world and it leads people to become homeless or incarcerated. When a person loses their sense of value they gain the capability to commit crimes or even to commit suicide. When Jesus mentions the least of these He specifically defines them as the hungry, the thirsty, the sick and the imprisoned… all these are people have either lost their sense of value or never had a sense of value to begin with. What about the rich man that came to Jesus asking “what must I do to be saved”? What about the richest man in the Bible King Solomon who called life vanity? Most of the things that make people feel valuable are illusions that give people faith in themselves. I have spent a lifetime watching illusions blow up in my face and in the faces of others. Maybe life is about losing the illusion… losing our lives… to find our lives. When you witness a sick person fighting to stay alive you will often see a person that awakens to these illusions as they approach their last breath… as they approach their death. When a person accepts their fate they will begin to live… I mean truly live. We are all terminal and the worldly things that bring us value in this life are also terminal. We will all die someday because God does not heal us from our physical condition that inevitably leads all to death. What’s left of us in the end is the true value… those things which will not die with us. The Bible talks about a judgment called the bema seat where our life is put through the test of fire and our value amounts to what doesn’t burn in the end.

Yesterday I bought my 5 year old son Elijah a bean bag and on the way home in the back seat he yelled out “I love you dad”. His older brother Noah then said “you only love dad because he bought you a bean bag”. I remember the Bible story of the prodigal son and how the younger brother lost everything, but found his life in the process. When the young brother came home with nothing he expected his father to reject him, but was surprised to find a father who welcomed him home with a party. The Bible tells us not to find value in our works, but through grace. Our value lies in the grace that is freely given when everything falls apart. Sometimes we need things to blow up in our face in order to find our value in grace. There will always be people that say we only love our father because he bailed us out… just like the big brothers in the stories above. What makes grace valuable is that it’s a bail out plan that grants us the freedom to find value on our own. The whole Bible is filled with stories about the mistakes people made on their quest to find value.

There are more ways then one to bring up the past. When we bring up the past we are giving it power over the now. Most people allow the past to pollute their present without even realizing it. The past is far more then the verbal story that people tell. The past is a feeling people carry inside them. The past is an experience people look through. For those enmeshed with the past it has become a part of themselves and removing it is more complex then amputating a body part. For some the past is a cancerous limb attached to there soul that spreads to many aspects of their life. For some the past is such a strong part of their identity that the act of forgiving would mean losing a big part of themselves. The past destroys people slowly by sabotaging their relationships because as people peer through the past it causes them to make assumptions about people and situations. The past causes people to expect history to repeat itself and in doing this they often create a self fulfilling prophesy. Those severely enmeshed with the past will keep retelling the same old story and in doing so they keep reliving that story over and over again. Some people are enmeshed with a negative past, while some are enmeshed with a positive past. An un-dealt-with past is like undigested food…. like indigestion. An un-dealt-with past is like acid reflux. An un-dealt-with past is like stomach acid that keep coming up and inflicting the same pain… over and over. Enmeshment to the past is much like a drug addiction. Loved ones who try to set them free will get a violent response as if they were rejecting them. Trying to get a person clinging to the past to let go and move forward can be very hazardous. I have known and still know a few people who tell the same stories over and over again and even when you tell them you have already heard the story they still keep on telling it. I bet someday they will have rehab programs for people who are addicted to the past.

War veterans will often retell a story in which they were the victim of war, while others retell a story where they were the hero of war. Instead of living life in the now those enmeshed with the past insist on going back and retelling the same stories over and over again. Why do people keep retelling these stories? The people who tell these stories want you to know they are a victim or they want you to know that they are hero. The people who keep retelling these stories are giving you hints about who they are by telling you who they were, so that you will see them the same way they see themselves. People who spend hours in their mind retelling story after story they are defining the stories and allowing the stories to define them. If you want a first hand glimpse of people who live in the past all you have to do is find a place where alcoholics hang out. Misery loves company because the misery becomes invisible in the company of misery. Spiritually speaking evil is the act of concealing the truth… hiding the bars of the cage… pretending to be free. The word “PRESENCE” has taken on a whole new meaning to me these last couple of years. It is so obvious and irritating when you are spending time with someone whose past is keeping them from being present. Children are often the victim of parents that are in the same room, but not really present for their own child. It is extremely annoying to spend time with a person whose mind seems to always be somewhere else. What could be more important then being present? How can a person be present when they are a hostage to the past?

People who live in the past live inside a cage and the presence of free people makes their cage painfully visible. Retelling the stories is a way to ask see my cage… see my cage… do you see my cage now? When faced with freedom a person living in the past feels obligated to retell the stories because once again the mountain they face becomes painfully visible in their path. Sometimes people start retelling old stories when they are about to say goodbye or flat out run away from their feelings or run from the people who cause them to relive these feelings. Living in the past poisons relationships by replacing intimacy in the now with poison from yesterday. These people keep repainting, redefining, sabotaging and anticipating history to repeat itself. If you try to introduce reality into the picture they paint you will cause them to draw a sword. The only way to have a relationship with a person in a cage is to not love them. How could you love someone and yet still let them live in a cage? Relationships between people caged by the past and free people usually will not work unless caged people are willing to acknowledge the cage they live inside. A teaching tool opens doors by accepting responsibility or forgiving wrongs and moving on. A person caged by the past is often using pride as the lock on their door. The best thing you could do for people who live in the past is to draw a boundary by respectfully asking them to not talk about the past. When you draw a boundary they may run, but you keep the door wide open… you make the running about them… you make them take responsibility for walking away by simply keeping your door open. When you keep your door open, you refuse them the opportunity to play the victim. Boundaries in relationships are healthy… those who fail to let us draw boundaries are not healthy.

The final cure for the past is the light of God. When the past keeps coming up over and over it is in fact a sign that it has yet to be brought under God’s light. I started meditating upon the issue of the past and realized that some people will not be able to bring their past under the light in this life. Horrible things have happened to people…. in fact SO horrible that these people will only understand it when they stand in death directly before the light of God. The goal however is to shed light on the past in this life in a way that stops the past from robbing us of the precious opportunities to love, to be loved and to live present in the now. When people keep telling the same old stories it is a sure sign that they have yet to be healed and require an extra measure of grace.

I hope I have given people the opportunity to rise above and see a new perspective. It is not about the destination, but the journey. Life is a process that works uniquely with all of us. As long as we have a next breath that next breath holds a purpose for our life. Life itself is the answer that attempts to lead us to the right questions.

It is another Saturday morning where my mind strangely has awakened at 2:30AM with a longing to write. I tried to resist for 1 hour only to lye there falling deeper into thought. What am I feeling that I feel so earnestly needs to be shared or further explored before my peers? Maybe it is just a health issue that often wakes me up early? I am awake, so I might as well write because it is what it is….

What is something we all started looking for at a young age, something that has lead some to religion, some to politics, some to wealth or the unsuccessful quest for wealth, even lead some to addictions? What have people sacrificed time, money, relationships and in some cases their sanity trying to find? What has led many people to be deceived… some for a moment and others for a lifetime? What keeps people awake at night and in some cases (like with me today) wakes them up early in the morning? What has become the lens that we all see ourselves and others through? What is the foundation for the kind of people, parents, friends, employees, and neighbors we are in our world? What is the cause for all the wars the world has ever fought? What have many people died trying to find it? Today I want to write about a simple word that affects every aspect of nearly all of our lives… Today I want to write about meaning.

Is meaning worth all the time, energy and trouble it creates? Is meaning something we find or something that finds us? Are any of us really qualified to define meaning to others or even ourselves? Does our search for meaning benefit us or in the end does it end up costing us? Do we lose more then we gain by searching for meaning? Do we hurt more people than we help when we believe that we have found meaning? Is meaning found in power or in resisting the desire to obtain power? Now I am not a Christian, but I believe in the teachings of Jesus. I believe Jesus was anointed and I see great truth in His words. Mahatma Gandhi successfully freed the nation of India by following the teachings of Jesus. Examine what Jesus said about John the Baptist below…

Matthew 11:11 “Assuredly, I say to you, among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

When I look up close at the lives of others and even my own life I see a tricky search for meaning. Meaning is like the search for water in the midst of an endless hot and dry desert. There are many stories about people who thought they found meaning only to find out later they were wrong. There are many people who like to pretend they have found meaning. One thing for certain is the fact that few have stopped searching for meaning because clearly they have yet to find it. Those who pretend to have found meaning have sleepless nights, private moments of doubt and great despair. I have seen many arrogant preachers of meaning fall to what they define as sin. WHY? Because even they do not really believe in the meaning they preach. Has anyone really found meaning? When we all physically die at some point will we look back on our lives and find meaning? What about people who have stopped looking for meaning? What about the people who don’t believe meaning exists?

Does looking for meaning distract us from the most important aspects of live? Do we miss out on precious things right under our nose when we look outside our lives for meaning? Marriages and children are often destroyed by those who look outside their lives to find meaning. The search for meaning can often be summed up in the term “if only”. Many people live their entire lives saying if only I was, if only I had and if only I could. Our endless search for meaning seems to be designed to wear us out, leading to walls and countless dead ends. As quickly as we think we have found meaning is as quickly as meaning turns into a mirage in this dry desert we call our world. How do most find water in the desert? Most people stop their search at some point digging a deep hole and finding water right below where they are standing. The idea of a well reminds me of when Jesus broke through the barriers of Jewish racism to speak with the Samaritan woman at the well. This woman sought to find meaning in men only to end up relationally bankrupt.

John 4:9-18 Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”

In conclusion I believe our quest to find meaning is the most destructive path we can follow. I believe our search for meaning takes us away from everything that truly matters. I believe our search for meaning often becomes an open doorway to the manipulation of preachers, politicians and corporations. The elite actually become wealthy by exploiting our search for meaning. TV commercials, infomercials and every form of advertising known to man are designed to remind us of our search for meaning. As our children become the victims of our frantic quest to find meaning, this dreadful disease spreads through history repeating itself over and over again. The search for meaning has spun like the black hole of history devouring peoples’ entire lives. I leave you with more words from Jesus….

Matthew 6:25 “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

Matthew 7:14 Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Matthew 16:25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.

Matthew 19:15-24 (Jesus Counsels the Rich Young Ruler) Now behold, one came and said to Him, “Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?” So He said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He said to Him, “Which ones?” Jesus said, “‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” The young man said to Him, “All these things I have kept from my youth. What do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Luke 8:14 Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity

Luke 12:15 And He said to them, “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.”

John 6:27 Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.”

John 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.

John 6:68 But Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

John 8:12 Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”

John 10:10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

John 17:3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.