Wanderlust

I have been thinking about the nature of corruption a lot lately.  When I was in high school one of the most popular teachers gave a lesson I will never forget.  He had a student stand up on a chair while he knelt on the floor.  He instructed the student to pull him up, which of course the student couldn't do.  The teacher, on the other hand, tugged lightly, and the student fell off the chair.  They switched places to the same results.  Then he said, "It's always easier to pull someone down than to pull them up.  Be careful who your friends are."  That lesson has been on my mind while I consider something hard.

I have some friendships that are definitely corrupting more than saving.  With this wanderlust that has settled on my soul I have started to wonder why nothing is changing.  A possible reason...Gen 12:1.  God told Abram to leave his land and family but he brought his Dad.  It wasn't until his father died that God allowed Abram to get where God had wanted him to be in the first place.  Now I'm not saying that I need to leave my family to get my move on but maybe I need to leave behind some of the comfortable relationships that I've been afraid to sever, or at least limit.  No matter what the reason, I need something to change or this wanderlust is going to chew me up.  I need to check for enemy strongholds in my life and get rid of them and part of that, at least in my mind, is getting out of this rut.  Change up the schedule, re-prioritize.  I don't want to hurt my friends, which is part of why I have waited for so long to do what I have known for a while needed to be done.

All this in my brain has been making me think about how society has changed.  Cussing, intimate relations, nudity, drugs...all has become acceptable and prevalent in entertainment.  I had begun to feel that I was being judged as ridiculous for finding this fact abhorrent, for finding those things unacceptable.  I know the world is going to decline until the end.  I know things are going to get worse.  For the first time I'm having to actually think about how to be in the world but not of it.  How do you engage with a culture obsessed with media that is drowning in sex, drugs and vulgarity without being stained and tainted by it.  Do I have a right to expect that those things shouldn't be in my presence?  This is part of the reason why I'm choosing to remove myself from certain groups of people in my life, at least for a time.  It sounds judgy.  I've begun to realize the thin line between knowing something is wrong and looking down your nose at someone.  One feels very like the other to the person at the receiving end I'm afraid.  It doesn't change the fact that if I can't expect people to modulate their behavior around me then I need to find somewhere else to be.

There are bigger problems in the world to be sure.  Figuring out where to stand, how to make a difference, how to be firm in a rising sea... If I'm going to live like the Lord is coming back soon, then I need to start preparing.  Figuring out how to love, how to give, how to know my God so well that nothing can shake my faith.