By request, this is an excerpt I read from my journal last weekend.  Read it like I wrote it, unedited.

Everybody has their native sin – something that seems to be part of who they are. Add to that a culture of self-worship, sliding standards, and personal happiness as the ultimate pursuit and we have a perfect recipe for cultural deception.  God gets made out to be the bad guy when he forbids things we are so sure will make us happy.  They feel so natural.  We are so easily deceived.  Like my three-year old daughter that throws a temper tantrum when she cannot have cookies for dinner, we object to God’s righteous, eternal standards.

But everybody disagrees with God somewhere. Every person. Every family. Every culture. Every epoch.

The question is one of wisdom.  Will we be wise enough to humble ourselves and agree with God? Will we be smart enough to recognize that he sees something around the eternal corner that we do not see ourselves? Will we not realize that God wants us happy even more than we do?  But his long-range mind sees things we do not.

We want quick-fix, sugar-rush happiness. He sees eternal weight of glory.

The message of Scripture is this: play it out.  Live to please yourself, live for your personal happiness – it’s an experiment in futility.  Destined for disappointment.

Be smarter than that. Be wiser. Be more forward-thinking.

Sin is not just evil; it’s stupid.

Our idols are like middle school boyfriends: they lie to us.  Sin lies. It over-promises and under-delivers.  It is an expert marketer, but completely untrustworthy.

Yet I’m a sucker. I believe the hype.  Everybody believes the hype – it just has to be the right hype. Wise is the man who learns what hype he falls for.  We are so prone to judge people for being gullible in areas we don’t fall for.  But we all fall.  Moral stupidity is part of our fallen condition.

Good thing we have a wise savior.

Solomon nailed it: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (Proverbs 9:10)