Friday, August 10, 2012

Tag

I am like a child playing a game of tag. Maybe a better term would be a sheep. Ok… Sheep-child?? Sometimes I play fairly. Often I cheat. There are times of laughter, arguments, anger, smiles, tears, and exhaustion. I like to create my own rules to the game. Nevertheless I am constantly running away from, or after, someone… something. We are all children, sheepishly wandering around tagging, in hopes of winning the game. The problem is that in reality we need someone else to give us the rules. Someone with authority needs to call us out on our cheating. Yet, we all like to be the referee of our own games. This is what it is to be human. It is a product of the fall. The irony of the situation is that in our sheepy-child-life we don’t believe that we are in need of help. We don’t think that we have a sheepy-child-life at all! We create the rules remember! In our own eyes, we are rock stars… gods of this game of tag! Sheep!? Whatever! Who naturally thinks they are a lowly, incompetent, brainless creature? To hell with that! We are… I am… a rock star god!

 “Never” you say?! Hmmnnn. Ok. Go on making up parameters to your game. Continue believing the lies your heart has carefully constructed.

 One of the most frustrating things about dealing with a paranoid schizophrenic mom, is that she is constantly living in a reality that is totally separate from everything we know. She has extreme anger, and extreme bitterness. She has created rules to her game that are intricate and thorough. Some days she is sure that the FBI is tapping her phone in order to access information that she alone knows. She tells me that I should skip work because the president issued a roadblock in order to take me captive and get the code she left me in her last letter. Welcome to my daily list of voicemails. ☺

 I have come to the realization that we are not all that different from my schizo-mother. Her mind has built a fortress of lies that she can rarely penetrate. She stays up all night trying to filter through it all… longing for a little truth, but only falling deeper into the labyrinth… growing in hatred towards everything. While my mother is extreme, we all do the same thing. We convince ourselves that we are not bad people. We tell ourselves that money, education, success, or romantic relationships will bring us victory in this game of tag… only, we don’t listen to the referee! We keep making up rules. Everyone tries to justify their crazy lives with their made up rules. So often we give ourselves fully to the idols of our hearts. Tag. Your it… Now off to chase another.

 Please stop the game. Stop the tagging. Stop the chasing. Stop making up realities based on lies! God has given us truth. His word will eat to the core of the fortress you have constructed if he has willed it. The blood of Christ will save you from this stupid game of tag. Do not believe in your game! Believe in Jesus. Please!

 “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
 on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test
 and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; 
they have not known my ways.’ As I swore in my wrath,
 ‘They shall not enter my rest.’”
-Hebrews 3:7-11