Living Honestly

"Make no mistake; God is not mocked. For a person will reap only what he sows." -Galatians 6:7 

"Freedom is having the ability to say 2+2=4" --George Orwell (1984) 

I think the first thing that began to set me free is when I realized that I had been lied to. I realized I was lied to about God, about life and everything in between. Once I started becoming free, I found an insatiable hunger for honesty and honest people. Towards the beginning I had no tolerance for anyone that would appear to deceive me. (this was to my error as I was too hasty and rash at times.) But there is something so wholesome and so freeing and so alive about pure, simple honesty.

The other day I was thinking about the world's economic crisis and how it started and snowballed into a recession nightmare. People as a whole decided they wanted to own what they had not worked for and get things on credit. The thing about the real world is that planet earth, in its raw form doesn't have credit. You can't take out vegetables and fruit without first planting them. There is something so honest about that. I think I need to own a farm or something.

I came to a realization though that our society as we know it would collapse if people had a sudden awakening to pure, raw honesty. We would come to a screeching, grinding halt and we would have a depression like never before.

I was reading a study once that listed the top ten things that would send us into a depression. I laughed darkly at one of the points which was "If consumers started living within their means and being logical and rational with their money." Imagine that. Living honestly and with self control would sink us. There is something terribly wrong with that picture.

I began realizing that in my life I have nothing tangible to trade. I realized that I could go months without ever even touching actual money for transactions. Everything has been reduced to computer data somewhere on a bank's computer. It is safe to say that the sum total of my livelihood depends on someone's accurate accounting skills and honesty and integrity. (there is a scary thought.)

Many strong and powerful men fight to hang on to their delusion. They become tyrants as they themselves become slaves to the lies they have told themselves. This world, I believe, is coming apart at the seams because it is saturated with this lie. We no longer farm. We no longer plant food. We no longer hunt or raise livestock. We no longer barter and trade. No, we have technical, abstract jobs that often times have nothing to do with anything other than words, pictures, and numbers in a computer data base.

So I will take this into my spiritual life, my religion, and psychological life. I guess after living thirty one years in a family, religion, and lifestyle that forced me to lie, honesty is becoming so refreshing to me. Turns out God agrees.

Churches have told me that if I am a Christian that God would prevent catastrophes happening to me. If bad things happened, I must have done something wrong or Satan is attacking me. Turns out, planet Earth, Terra Firma is so very honest. Reality is...well, so very real. And I was not. We are not. So we suffer miserably.

Another sickening realization is that for years my spiritual walk with God depended on the accuracy and integrity/honesty of one or a select few pastors and elders. So naively I believed them as they lied to me from the pulpit. This they encouraged, as to think and question for myself was blasphemy since I wasn't schooled nor did I have the life experience that qualified me. After all, you don't question God's own anointed.

When my life came to a grinding halt about a year and a half ago, I took a good long look at why. I started with the fruit that came to full harvest and I worked backwards to the roots, to the seeds as to what was sown. For years I was lying to myself and was lied to by others that good seeds were indeed sown. It is no wonder that I did destructive things with my life and subjected myself to sick relationships and religion thinking good would come out of it.

We as a society love to sow bad seeds, lie to ourselves about the consequences, or the fruits. And one day we wake up to the horrible nightmare of reality when we reap the bitter harvest.

I think this is why I have a very strong, savage, wild streak in me that craves nature, and living in the raw wild. I guess that is why I want to go to Africa. I want to live in a world that is honest. I crave dirt. I crave blood. I crave sweat and tears. I crave good, real suffering that comes with honesty. Why? because it feels REAL.Yes, honesty is hard to adjust to as it tends to hurt when our carefully constructed lies and fantasy worlds fall apart in front of our eyes and we stare in shock and terror at our own personal apocalypse. But the end result is a beautiful savage world, and we can rest in knowing that we don't ever have to be lied to again, and in turn, we never have to lie to ourselves.

I guess another conclusion that I came to is that sin (destructive and degrading actions) sprouts from lying to ourselves or being lied to. It is that ever rebellion against reality, that we reap what we sow, trying to mock God. This is a deep spiritual truth that over the centuries of our human existence God has been trying to tell us. It is a truth that will bring us to total freedom from bondage.

Do you think, dear reader, that you can put your hand to the flame and you will not be burned? It is what we tell ourselves all the time. It is why millions of lives are ruined from finances, to marriages, to STD's, unwanted pregnancies, health problems...and the list goes on.

Is your life going well? Before you answer, think honestly. If you have to justify things, explain things away and rationalize, chances are, you are lying to yourself. If you have to ignore certain things in your life, overlook, or minimize, chances are, you are lying to yourself. Are you living as you dreamed when you were a child? Why not? Are the lies you believed and perhaps still do so strongly preventing you from doing what you proposed to do? Do you rationalize it and make excuses as to why your dreams never took root and came to fruition? Do we mock God by thinking we can sow one thing and reap something completely different?

Our world has crashed for a reason. I think it is time we start living honestly. Maybe a good old fashioned worldwide meltdown of our economy and overall lifestyle would be good for the soul.