Painting by the numbers.

Have you ever completed a 'paint by the numbers' or a challenging 'connect the dots'? Since I have probably done a thousand of them in my relatively normal childhood, I am going to assume that most of you have. For those of you who don't know what they are, they are activities designed for children to help them learn how to follow instructions and focus (among other things). I think one of the reasons that children find them so entertaining, is that there is a strong element of surprise and discovery to it. You are first presented with an incomplete and vague image. But slowly, if you follow the instructions with care and attention, you begin to unravel something wonderful that you could not fully appreciate until you were done.

What got me thinking about these elementary aged activities, was a conversation I was having with myself about love and boundaries. I live in a city where one of the most celebrated values of society is the freedom to choose. The freedom to choose is an incredible gift. Not only is the right to choose a gift, but so is the ability.

One thing I think we humans ignore too often or fail to take into account, is that we are above many things emotional creatures. What I mean to emphasize is that we don't really naturally do the things that are logical, practical or beneficial for us. I think we are very driven to do instead that which feels good or what seems right. If what our emotionally driven state happens to do aligns with what is actually logical, practical or beneficial; it seems to me often more chance than foresight or wisdom.

The difficult thing with what I just said, is how to justify it in a way that will not seem judgemental or prejudiced. This is not just my dilemma though. This is a human dilemma. We all do it to some degree whether we acknowledge it or not.

I said earlier that we humans are very much emotional creatures. Well I believe we are also primarily moral creatures. This means that we operate with a world view that intimately entails that there are wrong things and right things. So please do me a favor and recognize that while I am about to suggest that there are a good many things out there that are just plain wrong, for you to disagree with me, is exercising the same ability and right that you yourself may be annoyed at me for using.

So let me sum up to myself what I am attempting to have suggested thus far.

We humans operate mostly out of a highly emotional state. We are moral creatures which constantly evaluate things as right or wrong. Neither our emotional or moral sense is reliable on their own standing to align with what is logical, practical or beneficial.

So now for my train of thought.

Proper and Real Love needs boundaries. Love without boundaries is a deceptive and overly romanticized concept. Without boundaries all things, especially Love, become twisted, perverse and inevitably a wild, self devouring beast. These are not pleasant concepts or realities to own up to or consider.

Mother love for a child, is something incredibly beautiful and precious. But even this without boundaries has been SEEN in this world to slowly progress into a horror among horrors. I will not give actual references, but the following scenario is not imaginary. Mother loves child, mother begins to define herself through the care for child, mother depends on child for self worth, mother smothers child, child grows up sheltered and dependent, mother uses guilt and manipulation to maintain hold on child, mother and child confuse aspects of human sexuality with mother love....and this is where I will end my analogy. Keep in mind, this is nothing new in human history. The Oedipus complex is not something new. Incest is not something new. There exist dark and evil wrongs in every culture and society. What we forget is that acknowledging these evils actually points to a thing of hope, that there is a RIGHT way to turn towards. We need not have the human story be an endless spiral into madness.

Boundaries protect. Boundaries guide. Boundaries are not there to limit potential, hinder progress or imprison joy...not when they are from God. I believe God created us out of love, to be loved and so that we could love. That means the human life is a 'connect the dots' or a 'paint by the numbers' of immeasurable beauty, depth and wonder. Since life was created by the loving hands of God, it makes sense that we would go to Him to guide us. It would make sense that even if we do not yet see the whole picture that we would follow His leading above our own. If we shut our senses and our hearts to Him, we lose all sense of of direction.

What other option is there? If there is no God we are slaves to the material universe, or foolish gods of our own delusion making up a false destiny for ourselves. Look at the perversion of our world. We no longer recognize the sacred. The sacred is how things are meant to be...for no reason other than goodness and love. Yet we have taken marriage, art, literature, music, science and even reason out of the boundaries set by God, and turned them into wild beast that devour our children. It is difficult to overstate or over dramatize this. Pornography has turned our beautiful children into simply lifeless objects of self-pleasure. Adultery has turned our marriages into self-serving contracts instead of self-sacrificing bonds of love. Naturalism has stripped us of accountability. Our insatiable hunger for liberty unbound has led to the destruction of the law, the loss of reason, the destruction of meaning, the sacrifice of heart, the compromise of good, and the rejection of God.

As spoiled, ungrateful children, we spit at the hand that literally feeds and upholds us. We scoff at instruction and deface and perverse the wondrous painting before us. We take 'connect the dots' intended to be things of beauty, and we literally and recklessly smear profanities across all the lines. To live without God is to live without a given purpose, a real meaning, a genuine value or a real hope. To live without God is to live a lie, however appealing. To live without God is to strip yourself of your actual Glory and settle for a lesser self.

When you see in the news; husband cheats, girl raped by gang, mother killed child, father rapes daughter, artist uses fetuses, rapper promotes hate, politician lies, business man cheats, teens commit suicide, brother kills sister and on and on and on. Your stomach convulses at it for a reason, you know in the depths of your numbed soul that things are not as they should be. But here is the warning. Who will guide us? Who can tell us how far we are from right, and how close we have come to wrong? Who will lay down the law? Who will decide humanities purpose? Who will give us worth? The answer is that without God...it will be anyone! It could be Hitler, it could be Obama, it would be Lindsy Lohan, it could be Deepak Chopra.

This is what it means when the Bible says "There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" The TRUTH is that we all need God. We all are blind to our sick and awful sins without Him. We are not capable of seeing our personal evil without Him. Without God we have the delusion that we are okay, that we are not so bad, that we don't need help, that we don't need to be saved, that we are not in need of Salvation.

But there is Hope. We humanity, are not alone.

21But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to
which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22This righteousness from God comes
through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for
all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely
by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25God presented
him as a sacrifice of atonement,[i] through faith in his blood. He did this to
demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins
committed beforehand unpunished— 26he did it to demonstrate his justice at the
present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in
Jesus.
27Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle?
On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. 28For we maintain that a
man is justified by faith apart from observing the law. 29Is God the God of Jews
only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, 30since there is
only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised
through that same faith. 31Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at
all! Rather, we uphold the law.

Romans 3: 21-31

I pray you take the effort to find out the real picture your Life is meant to show.