I real-life it, I spill vices

Christ is in our midst! He is and ever shall be! 

“Brethren, join in following my example, and note those who so walk, as you have us for a pattern. For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame—who set their mind on earthly things” (Philippians 3:17-19).

Dishonesty is a side effect of shame. Shame begets self-hatred which in turn expresses itself as dishonesty; lying to others in order to fit in and be accepted. It comes from feeling shame about ourselves, the true self. 

And I do not want to be ashamed of myself anymore. I do not want to lie to others about myself like making up excuses for a non-present alcoholic parent. I want to be open with others, because I realize that lying to others, trying to fit in, laughing something off is not the way to go about things and this is a ticket to resentment and more self-hatred. 

Basically, anything that severs the connection and forces one back in on themselves, into their own bubble of shame is not going to be sustainable because whatever is truly within a person must come out. It must find a way out and will do so in poor ways, usually—in my experience—as self-destruction and more “going along to get along.” 

The behavior of the latter is desperately performative because the individual knows something is wrong but does not want to upset the collective–they want to be accepted, so they push themselves down in a bid to walk as the others do which, of course, brings up cognitive dissonance. To walk with the crowd means giving up our individual nature which becomes shameful the more it is repressed, eventually manifesting as emotional problems and cancer. 

The other option is to give up the dance and walk with yourself knowing there are others who will find you and you will find them. But the more we give in to social cues that go against our principles the more divided we are psychologically. 

Now, is this the single cause of mood disorders or mental health disruptions? No, but it helps explain the general health and state of the world, to my mind.

There is much derision and divisiveness on top of constantly being told what we need by corporations and politicians. There is only a push and pull: this is the raging sea pulling is a part and inducing fear and panic where lying seems to be the only course of action… 

“I will be whoever the world needs me to be in order to be saved from this, to make it stop.”

But it will never stop, because it is the nature of the world to push and pull us–that is what it does, there is no relief from its storm because the storm is the world.

Christ, however, is rest: “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Matthew 11:29-30).

He loves us and wants us to grow and loves us through our growth in Him and His love. 

He is Truth and to know ourselves is to know Him. He is within and without us, we are made in God’s Image, who is Christ, and so to be true to ourselves is to become like Him, because to be in the world, and to be of it is to live in a lie. 

I was ashamed of the literal Christ for a long time… So ashamed that I could not outwardly love and follow because I was afraid that my friends (the world) would reject me. I gave in to the world and denied myself Truth and love at the expense of self-destructive tendencies and alcoholic inclinations under the umbrella of conceited self-loathing. When we deny baser natures, which are the passions and walking with the world it might feel as though we are killing ourselves in order to become something foreign—not of this world. 

And that is scary, but like a snake unwilling to shed its skin there is no movement with fear; fear is stagnation. We need to be changing. We need to be conforming to Truth or else we will remain in an uncomfortable, yet easy, shameful lie. 

We are called by Christ to change in an effort to purify ourselves and become like Truth. And so, to accept Truth is to realize the lie, acknowledge that we have been chasing waves instead of being honest and submitting to Truth. 

We instinctively take issue with this idea of submission, most of us, but we submit to things every day and, frankly, if we do not submit to Truth then we are–effectively–bowing before the devil and worshiping him. The devil does not care whether we light candles and intone his name because turning away from Christ suffices submission to the old man. That is who the old man is loyal to, Satan—the prince of this world.

In order to live in Truth, renewed by His light and glory, we must sacrifice our will to come into alignment with His. Otherwise, we are walking with the world, still sacrificing ourselves to do so, living with shame and dishonesty to “get along to go along.” 

For example: When we lust over others, long over them, objectify others in some way we are embodying a conceited way of being, demanding others to be what we want them to be, which is in service to us. This mode of walking through the world swallows the landscape and deconstructs people. How we treat others defines us and when we break them down into component parts then the same occurs to us—fracturing our ability to perceive others.

The mentality of a fractured person is pushed and pulled wherein we become like the waves of a great tempest, beating upon the boats of persons. We become that part of the sea that rises up against others, aiming to pull them below the surface and cause them to lose their grounding, their faith. 

We become what we do. We become what we worship and most of us live with a sense of self-worship, self-aggrandizing behavior. Conceit is self-worship, “fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5), these are ways in which we conform the world to be what we want it to be–we worship what is important to us, so we must be wary of what we make important. Because what that is will inform us of our direction in life—who we are. 

And who is that, really? Maybe we allow our personalities to be grafted rather than develop a personhood in relation with God… So, along with understanding what is important to us we need to acknowledge the parts of our personality that are not of God, but of this world. For me, I can point to my addictive personality in relation to alcohol, cigarettes, and being a general nuisance to myself and others, but that’s not me.

These are traits I picked up in a void place that helped me like a trauma blanket and thermos coffee to move through depression and self-loathing. It did not help wrench me out, though; these traits helped me better embody that void place I was stuck in, righty-tighty-style. 

That is not me.