Happy June, friends. Hope everyone had a nice Memorial weekend. Ours was the chilliest I can remember, but it was also the first real break in the rain we’ve had, so we got out and worked our butts off all weekend to get on top of the yard work.
This is more of a tea talk than a coffee talk because I’m trying to cut back on coffee. Actually, I had a nice big mug of English breakfast when I started this, but I didn’t get past the first sentence before I had to stop and take Dixie out of her crate to stretch her legs and do her business, and now it’s more than an hour later and my tea’s long gone and now I’m sipping water while I tap this out on my phone.
I’m figuring that this is how it’ll have to go if I want to blog here more often. ICYMI, I finally posted about why I quit yoga and the Enneagram. Those posts were both a real challenge just to find the time to sit down and write, and they’re only the tip of the iceberg of stuff I want to talk about. I’ve got a rare break in which I’m between freelance assignments and it’s too wet to work outside, so I’m trying to get on top of my other writing. But it’s so hard to get motivated to even open up my laptop when I’m not getting paid to, and with this puppy it’s hard to get even one hour alone with my thoughts. So I’ve decided to get over my aversion to long form writing on my phone and just squeeze it all in whenever I get a few quiet minutes to myself.
I’ve even been kicking around the idea of attempting another podcast, because sometimes I just want to rant and ramble and it would be easier to just spill my thoughts into a microphone. It wouldn’t be anything fancy, just me and my laptop’s built-in mic and no professional production values. I probably wouldn’t even take time to edit out the verbal tics and awkward pauses. I’m not after a big audience or selling books or gaining sponsorships or any of that. It would just be me rambling to you guys about the Bible, conspiracy theories, stuff that’s going on in the world and how to think about it all from a Biblical worldview.
But I hesitate because I think only two or three of you would actually want to listen to that, and because writing is more my wheelhouse, and I feel like I should stay in my lane. Also, all my best thoughts are early in the morning and by the time I have time to do anything with them my mind has gone blank.
But I’m also tired. A big part of me doesn’t want to do any of this. I didn’t want to write those posts because they’re embarrassing. Because I should have known better but I still let myself get led astray. But that’s exactly why I wrote them anyway. Because I DID know better but I still got sucked in. That’s how easy it is–you can be a Bible-believing Christian with rock-solid faith who’s grounded in good theology and sound doctrine and STILL get taken in by the culture and the deceptions and the spiritual traps that are laid at every turn. And there are SO many traps being laid right now. There is such a spirit of deception that has come upon the Church and I honestly think God is allowing it to sift us.
But I’m tired of seeing outspoken Christians I once looked up to falling for these deceptions and falling away from the faith and trying to take as many people as they can with them. I’m tired of watching the devil use women’s ministries to prey on vulnerable women with the same-old prettified half-truths that worked on Eve.
I’m tired of watching the world fall apart. Of watching people I love make important and potentially dangerous health decisions without all the information because most of the information is censored. I’m tired of constantly being gaslighted and propagandized. I’m tired of all the extra work I have to do just to get to some semblance of the truth. I’m tired of waking up every day and looking at headlines and feeling like I’ve been transported into a bad sci-fi horror movie with a plot that’s a mashup of 1984, Brave New World, They Live and every Phillip K. Dick novel.
Some days it makes me want to quit writing altogether, get rid of the internet and put all my time, energy and resources into us becoming sheep and chicken farmers.
But mostly it all just makes me mad enough to want to do something, or at least speak up and say something, even if I just help inspire one person out there to wake up and pay attention, to be on guard, to open their Bible, get in the word and get right with God.
Lately I’ve been reading through Genesis, and yesterday I got to the part where angels try to rescue Lot and his family before God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah. I’ve got a lot of thoughts about that, but one thing that jumped out at me was the reaction of Lot’s sons-in-law. They had actual angels IN THEIR HOUSE warning them that the city was about to be destroyed and whoever didn’t leave was going to die. And they didn’t believe them. They thought the whole thing was a joke. They were completely blinded by their normalcy bias.
And I feel like that’s where we’re at. We’re all on the precipice of destruction and time is running out fast, and warnings are everywhere. Not only do we have prophecy telling us what’s happening and what’s about to happen, we also have the IMF and Davos crowd putting out slick videos and taking out glossy ads and writing books telling us exactly how they plan to depopulate the earth and turn the survivors into cyborg slaves who will own nothing and be happy about it by 2030.
But most people think it’s all a joke. Or a crazy conspiracy theory. Or they just don’t know anything about it at all.
Time is running out, you guys. Let’s not be like Lot’s sons-in-law. Let’s heed the warnings and pay attention to what is absolutely not normal and take this stuff seriously.
Whew. See what I mean about wanting to rant and ramble?
Look, I’m not here to fearmonger. There’s good news. Evil is real and we need to take that seriously, but God is real, too, and he’s sovereign over the plans of men, and over the plans of the devil. He has a plan too, and his plan will prevail. Because I’ve read the back of the book, guys and spoiler alert: Jesus wins.
And so do we, if we’re on his team.