A Puppet On A String

Free will is a joke. We're all covered in buttons and strings. Push this button and we'll do this, pull that string and we'll do that. Some people will quit listening because I said that. I pushed a button.

Advertisers, marketers and politicians don't care if you believe you're in control. Believing we're in control actually gives us less control. The string was pulled and we responded and now we have to defend our response, so we own it.

The evidence is everywhere. Look at any group of people. Why are they so similar and yet so different from other groups? Why do they all have the same haircut? Why do they all have tattoos? Why do they all dress the same? Why don't any of them drink? Why do they all smoke?

Why do the majority of Americans who believe that abortion is wrong also believe that we should have the right to carry a gun and the people who call themselves pro-choice believe that guns are unsafe. These issues should't be related unless we're all following a script that someone else is writing.

So should we just give up the fight? Do we just let the culture continue to control us and float downstream like a dead fish? No! When we learn that we're puppets we can take control of the strings. We can advertise to ourselves. We can push our own buttons. Its as simple as asking the question; "Where is this taking me?" Every book we read or show we watch is a string pulled. Every news program, every conversation, everything we eat or say or hear is a button pressed. If we don't like where we are or where we're going we can change it by changing who pulls the strings.

Religious Pride

Religious people are the hardest to please. It almost seems like the longer we follow or practice our Christianity the more rules we have. Every time we get a little better at something we make a new rule that everybody else needs to follow. We become the standard of Christianity for everyone else. When we first got saved we knew that mercy and grace were our only hope of acceptance, but after a few years of what we call growing and maturing we look back and say, "I wasn't even saved back then." Oh, but now we are! We have cleaned ourselves up, and made ourselves presentable and now we are acceptable to God.

This thinking is filled with pride. It causes us to put the cleanest parts of us in front and desperately try to hide the broken and dirty parts. It causes us to judge everyone else around us by our own self made standard. We expect maturity from infants. Instead of training and exhorting we condemn and tear down.

Sinners gladly heard Jesus. It was the religious people who hated His message. Good people hate mercy because it brings those who have not worked to an equal standing with themselves. So often our loud cries against sin are not from a loving heart toward the one who is being destroyed, but rather from a spirit of pride seeking to be validated for our abstinence and effort.