I have fought against writing this post.
That is partly because my subject matter for today does not quite fit with this blog's original intent. However, my main objection comes from the side of me that is so anxiously people-pleasing, so eager to be neutral. But like a prisoner to my crying heart, I must finally sit and write the words that are bursting from within me. I pray forgiveness, as always, if I write anything but truth.
I am certainly no prophet, and no messenger either. I won't claim that this is a word from the Lord that he has burdened me to proclaim to you. And yet I do feel burdened for my people, and I have a message for my home country; a warning perhaps is a better term.
I feel privileged to spend the majority of my time outside of the U.S., not because I don't want to be here, but because it allows me the luxury of an outside perspective of our society. Though I will never be completely objective I do feel I have a better understanding of America (for all intents and purposes in this post I am referring to the United States when I say America) than what I had before I left, and what I see does not encourage me. In fact, I have become deeply disturbed. This is not pointed to any group or person in particular, but to our nation as a whole. I fear we are allowing ourselves to be moved into a direction that is not only unhealthy, but dangerous. Let me explain:
I have watched my country slowly fade into a stupor, forgetting its past principles and focusing more on achieving fast, easy, and optimum pleasure. We have been lulled to sleep by our splendor and are cocooned in our wealth, dead to the realities around us. We have allowed ourselves to be deceived, and we accept these spoon-fed lies without struggle.
Whether we admit it or not, we believe the lie of advertising, that tells us we will be happy as soon as we purchase this next thing.
We believe the lie of consumerism that more is better, and then we construct big buildings just to store all of our stuff in.
We believe the lie of social media that we don't need actual human contact to feel connected to the world around us.
We believe the lie of pornography and erotica that we don't need real and pure intimacy to feel satisfied.
And we believe the lie that there is nothing more important than the world we are in now, and the life we are living today.
If I could say one thing to America, it would be this:
Wake. Up.
I feel especially able to say this because I have had moments in my life where someone has told me to wake up. For me, that someone was God. I want to tell you about the two occasions in my life when I was given a sharp shake to wake me from my daze.
The first time was when I was at college. For at least a couple weeks, maybe longer, I just didn't feel like myself. I felt off, and very distant from God and also my friends. I lacked passion to do anything worthwhile or productive. And like anybody who has a problem, I kept it to myself and asked no one for help. It was around Easter and I went to a special service my college was having by myself. I sat in the back and watched silently as the story of Christ's death and resurrection was told in a very intense drama. As always, I was enraptured by the story of Jesus giving everything for me and for everyone. At the end of the service we all sang the song "Christ is Risen" by Matt Maher, and when we got to the chorus my eyes widened and I felt the walls I had unknowingly built up around me fall down and fade away.
"Christ is risen from the dead, trampling over death by death,
Come awake, come awake, come and rise up from the dead." (Emphasis mine)
Come awake. That's what God told me in that moment. Wake up! Remember why you live, why all this is important. That's all he needed to tell me. I was "cured" from whatever had come over me, whether it was a spiritual attack or just human laziness.
The second time was just last year. I had come back from the DR to the States for a couple weeks to do a few things for the ministry. I had come with a strong passion to do what I thought was right on behalf of the people I work for in the DR. But after just two days of being back I fell once again into a distracted daze. My passion ebbed away as I was subdued by a comfy couch and all the world's entertainment at my fingertips. I was intoxicated by the pleasure available to me, the food I could eat, the warm showers I could take, even the soft toilet paper I could use. I gave up my strength and convictions for the chance to lie back and be fed by the distractions around me. I did it willingly, but I still ended the day feeling unsettled and unsatisfied.
I was alarmed at my sudden complacency, and as I pondered all these things I felt God giving me the same command he has given me before in times like this: Wake up. Come awake, and remember why you are here. Stop sleeping and start working toward what matters. Don't give in to the comfortable diverting stupor; fight it, and fight for the dream I gave you. Fight for the people I have entrusted to you.
That last paragraph came directly from my journal, an entry I wrote on October 2nd, 2014. I am telling you this because I truly fear that our nation is slipping into a stupor; I truly fear that we are willingly sacrificing and compromising our convictions and opting instead for a temporary pleasure that our enemy is selling to us. I'm not one to delve much into conspiracies but it's no secret that we have an enemy, and I am afraid he is doing a wonderful job at keeping America distracted until it's too late. He is prowling around the world and he knows exactly what to do to keep us from focusing on the truth. Because there are so many different cultures he has many different methods of keeping us from the truth. For many people he keeps them suffering; he keeps them low to the ground and miserable so they feel like they have nothing to dwell on except their misery.
But for America he has something special. Far from keeping us low, he encourages us to be elevated, to keep seeking wealth and glory on this earth so that we forget how fleeting it is. He knows that deep down all humans crave something to worship so he pushes us to worship ourselves, or he raises up idols in the form of movie stars and singers to give us something to praise and look up to. He encourages us to deify mere humans and put expectations on them that they were never designed to fulfill, so that very quickly we turn our backs and demonize them when they inevitably fall short. He helps us to pacify ourselves so that we don't see the great need around us, and we especially don't feel the emptiness inside us. And if we ever start to feel the emptiness we don't have to go far to temporarily divert ourselves from our bad feelings.
I had an unsettling dream last night, and the idea it represented is what finally urged me to write this post. I want to describe it to you, if you will bear with me.
After a brief time of a typical dream for me (I was in the Dominican-I have dreamed about the Dominican every night since I have been in America) the scene suddenly switched and I found myself watching a group of people in a white room. Though I sometimes saw the dream through a first-person view, I was uncharacteristically absent as I watched the drama unfold. The dream followed a young Asian girl, probably about my age. She was in that group of people; I didn't recognize anyone, but I think they were from several different ethnic backgrounds, though all from the same country. This group was fighting the main establishment in their nation or maybe even their world, probably a government-type organization. They didn't trust it and wanted to destroy it. I wasn't sure why but it was never a question in the dream that this establishment was evil and needed to be taken down.
Everything was white: the rooms, the uniforms all the guards wore, even all the machines. It was a bit futuristic. I somehow knew that the group was fighting their way up and in, to the center of everything. It was there that the organization could be stopped once and for all. The group fought guards for a long time and by the time the final room was reached everyone in the group had been killed except for the girl I had been following. She stepped into the room and discovered the truth behind everything: the world was meaningless. There were just a bunch of normal people working behind the scenes and pulling the strings of the world like a puppet to keep everyone on earth distracted and content with the way things were. They mollified the people so that they would never ask questions, so that they would never realize that the world had no purpose. The girl left the room at a complete loss of what to do. Everything she had worked for, everything she had fought for, was now pointless. Her friends and comrades had died for nothing. She tried to find comfort in her only family member remaining, her brother, but the people kept them separate so that she would remain alone and therefore powerless.
I came awake a couple of times during the night and went back to sleep hoping to find a happier ending to this miserable dream, but none came. Each time I came back to the girl wandering aimlessly, trying to find any sense of meaning in her world, and finding none.
This dream is not prophetic, nor do I think it has some important meaning behind it. But what is important is that for a rare instance in my life, I woke up with the crushing and overwhelming feeling that the world was meaningless. It took me a while to recover from the dream, and that time of the girl's aimless wandering will haunt me for a long time. But as I finally came back to reality one of my first thoughts was that there are so many people in this world who feel that way every morning they wake up. They feel that life is meaningless, and that there is no point to the struggles of this world. No wonder we as a nation try to find satisfaction in every aspect of our physical lives, to try and create purpose for ourselves.
I have a friend who told me the story of how Jesus saved her life when she was fourteen years old. After having a difficult childhood and struggling through middle school, she decided that she needed to know the truth about whether or not a higher being actually existed. If he did, she would have something to live for; if not, she would end her life, because this world would be meaningless. After searching she found her answer, or rather he found her. And her life has never been the same.
I think a quest like that is very remarkable in a girl so young, but I thank God she went searching. She found her hope, and it's the hope America needs right now. It is my belief that we have an enemy, and he is very real. But it is also my belief that there is someone much more powerful than he, and that being is fighting for us right now. If you really quiet yourself and take a look around you, you can feel the fight happening for every person, for every nation. There is a battle raging, a battle between good and evil. Both sides want us, and we are surrendering to the wrong side. We need to wake up and join the fight, or we will be lost.
Do you know the last time I saw our country rally together in a real and urgent quest for truth? It was the question of the blue and black dress. If you don't know what I'm talking about ask the person next to you or search "white and gold" on the internet; the first seven articles will explain the great mystery to you in detail. Why did we all participate in that debate but we don't participate in conversations about worldwide issues? Why did we all argue about that dress when we don't argue about how to end sex trafficking in the world? Why did we all follow the dress drama more closely than we follow the events in most of our friends' lives? Why did we all find time to search for the true colors of that dress but most of us can't find time to wrestle with serious questions like "what is the purpose of this world?"
I'm not condemning entertainment, but I am observing that our entertainment has become our lives. There was nothing wrong with enjoying the debate about the white and gold dress but it is just another example of a fleeting distraction that we consumed; and once we had completely and totally consumed it we searched for another fleeting distraction to devour that would satisfy the monsters inside of us temporarily. Can you not see? Can you not see the power these distractions have over you? It frightens me to watch, and to feel it when it happens to me.
There was another part of my dream that I initially disregarded because at first it seemed out of place, like it didn't belong in the story. But now I think I can take it as a sort of symbol, a very sobering symbol. The group had almost made it to the final room when a slot machine appeared on one of the walls. I was subconsciously aware that the evil establishment had placed it there in hopes of distracting our group from reaching the center. It was all white and had science-fiction type technology, but it was clearly a slot machine. There was nobody around it but I walked over to it (this time I was seeing things through my own eyes, not that of the girl). For some time during the dream we gambled, and I won several times, every time I played in fact. The machine dished out my winnings and we played some more. There was a vague sense of urgency and danger that I felt, but I allowed myself, and the whole group, to become distracted from their task by the slot machine. I had been talking to a group of people about gambling the night before which is why I originally discounted that part of the dream, but now I think it is a clear example of what I am talking about: a single, fleeting distraction kept an entire group of people from completing a task that, only moments ago, was of life or death importance to them. What a strange and fearful power these distractions hold over us.
A little later on in the morning after I had woken up from my dream I opened my Bible to Revelation 3 and read the letter to the Church in Sardis. It was chillingly similar to the concerns I have about my country now:
"I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you." (verses 1-3)
you are dead...wake up...I have not found your deeds complete...remember what you have received and heard...
Our nation is decaying. We are dying, and we hardly feel it from all the things we feed ourselves to dull the reality around us. Wake up, because we are not finished yet. Wake up, because it's still not too late. It won't be too late until that last day comes, and it is coming. That is the day that the whole glorious truth will be revealed, where we will be awakened from our self-induced slumber and our eyes will be forced away from the passing amusements we have held onto so dearly and be forced to look upon the truth that we have so skillfully ignored. Our knees will bend and our heads will bow and the reality we have shielded ourselves from will come crushing into us and we will finally know; yes, we will finally know just how far we have fallen, just how low we have descended. That will be a terrible day indeed. Glorious and terrible.
Yet we have hope. All was never destined to be completely lost. Hope remains as long as at least one person in our nation continues to be daring enough to cling to that hope.
"Yet you have a few people...who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy." (verse 4)
It is not too late. Wake up, and remember what has been told to you. You have been warned, America. Not by me, but by many who have come before me. We are, and always have been, without excuse. If you are asleep, if you are allowing the pleasures that America has to offer blind you from the realities of this world, wake up. Sometimes coming to America is like watching a person drift into a coma. He may be in a comfortable bed, he may be having a pleasant dream, but you know if you could just wake that person up to dwell in the real world, he would be so much better off. He would actually be living. That's what being alert and aware does to you: it gives you life, and life in abundance. Wake up, America.
Please, wake up.
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