… or what passes for it

Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen. 

“This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

“But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:17-24).

We all have an old man.

My old man is a drunk.

He seeks the world; he is utterly enraptured by flashing lights and shiny things. He’s like a fly to a bug light, finding a masochistic satisfaction in being burned, over and over again—like electrocuting your tongue with a battery. This old man, let’s call him “Toast,” stands for the world’s passing pleasures and values.

By his nature, Toast can never be satisfied because he is caught in the perpetual hamster wheel, thinking that if he just runs fast enough eventually, he will make progress. He believes that newer pleasures will save him; he believes that his salvation is found at the bottom of a vodka soda. He dies daily, but not to himself, rather growing inward, and death begets more death, because his redemption is a hangover, and his rebirth is found in a lie told in the morning.

The world deceives him, he deceives himself, and—clinging to pride—he lusts all the more for his tosspot martyrdom.

See, Toast’s pride allows him to keep lying to himself. His pride is what keeps him chasing worldly pleasures, because his pride has convinced him this is the way. The Jager washes over his heart like a bitter-licorice vine entangling him in thick, purple chaos. Toast gives in to pride because he has declared himself his own master. He has given in to vainglory by laughing off self-destruction as something done “for the bit.” He dies to God, becoming more like the world and its pleasures, feeling the exhilarating rush of wanton self-aggrandizement.

Like a voice shouting from the darkened forest, the old man cries just as “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they are abominable in their habits: There is none, not even one, who does good” (Psalm 13). Not one good Toast. It easier to live as our own god than it is to cultivate responsibility for our thoughts, words, or deeds. The old man claims what we do, say, and think is meaningless. The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God, there is no objective Truth, and life has no intrinsic value.”

The fool is a nihilist.

It must be exhausting.

The fool says this because it is an excuse. Toast’s lies are excuses. Toast’s drink of choice are excuses. Toast’s excuses allow him to avoid accountability. Toast’s excuses allow him to be blind.

Toast, deep down, knows there is something to see beyond the blackout.

Toast, deep down, is afraid to see, because he knows that once he sees beyond the boundaryless nothing that is a product of his blind heart then he will have no more excuses.

So, Toast fights all the more—he drinks like if he stopped, he would disappear. Because he knows, deep down, he will.

And that’s a good thing because he lives a lie.

He is a lie.

See, the old man Toast is not real, like any fleeting passion and pleasure he is a veil that we use to keep ourselves guarded from the Truth. Toast, the old man, does not like the Truth. Truth is Toast’s enemy. Truth is a light that will expose Toast as the vanity he is, as the tether to this world, as a desperate need to belong to this world, to walk as the others—no matter how blind they are themselves to the Truth.

Toast must fit in. He has an identity to protect. What is that identity? Shoot, if Toast had the courage to look in the mirror long enough he might be able to muster up a good enough lie to tell you. He’s scared to look in the mirror, because he knows there is nothing in the reflection, because he is void, like the audience at my first headlining gig.

I don’t know what he is—the old man: maybe he’s a defense mechanism that we put on in order to walk with the blind Gentiles; maybe he’s who we are without God; maybe he’s man’s natural state; maybe he’s a follower of the devil (and we don’t need to believe in the devil for him to be our master); and maybe he’s some amalgamation of all these things.

Regardless of what the old man is it does not change that he is always death.

The old man can survive for a long time, sometimes an entire lifetime goes by with us assuming the garment of “Toast” and believing that what we see is what we get, desperately clinging to the various ways we can “kill time” on our way to the grave.

This ain’t life, friend. Sometimes, though, this type of living—following the corrupted lusts of “Toast”—is exactly how we get a taste of that looming death that comes for us all. This death, without getting extreme, could simply be as easy as seeing your life for what it is: somehow, by God’s grace, being able to self-evaluate with a sober perspective.

This sobriety is more than going a couple days without a drink; this sobriety is the ability to confront a Truth that does not conform to our baser inclinations or comfort the lies that the old man tells us. This Truth is the antithesis to the things of this world, because it does not change—and the Truth is a Who.

Now, I don’t know much about anything, really, all I can do is tell someone to seek Christ, because if they learn from me then we both err. What I can speak to is that Christ does not suffer the old man Toast, and neither should we, because he’s not real. There is only one Truth and “no one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17).

God meets us where we are, and He respects us more than we respect ourselves. God, in His mercy, gives us blessings and talents, but He does not give us obedience. He loves us and would never cancel out our free will in order for us to be obedient to Him. So, like the rich, young man whom Christ speaks to in the above scripture we—confronted by Truth telling him that “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me” (Matthew 19:21). Nothing can be gained by God making us give up what possesses us, we must make our sacrifice to Him, willingly. Christ does not make us follow Him—we have to do that.

It is God’s will for us to have a choice. Always. And this is the start to taking responsibility, because once that choice is made God still respects us enough not to take our free will, so it is our choice to make.

Over and over again.