EDITOR,

When we look at all that is going on in the world it is easy to point our finger at our neighbor with contempt and then excuse ourselves from the same things.

Life has become complicated, less than fulfilling and for some down right miserable.

We look for chances to hide in such things as food or drink, drugs, T.V., social media, porn, a self-defeatist movement or whatever we use to occupy ourselves so that our day might pass by quicker only to begin a similar one the next. Meanwhile, all of these things become colorful habits to us, making our lives seem more like the comics unhinged from reality which we have exchanged the truly good things of life from which a good story can be written.

Truth be told, today we are all living highly spiritual lives charged with worship but for most not the kind that brings freedom, peace and joy.

You may think spirituality and worship, I don’t go to church? And if you do go to church, is devout worship what you are really doing there?

One of the last steps as a culture transitions on its path to embracing wickedness becomes its affection to idolatry.

Not just any kind of idol worship. It is when you become your own idol seeing to your own needs above all else.

Today we indulge in whatever way we want to feed our devotion to ourselves doing what works for us with a lessening sensitivity of care towards others. We take selfies and post our thoughts on Facebook, twitter and other social media that others may idolize us or at the least take note of us.

We give, lend, lead and befriend others when we feel a benefit can be derived for ourselves. Once the usefulness of that person or circumstance is depleted we move on to the next without expressing an ounce of genuine gratitude.

This loss of gratitude is also the loss of a part of love that motivates us to give in a sacrificial way just as we have received.

It is a virtue of God and a glue that holds community together without it things will not stay together.

As we worship self our soul dies a bit daily along with our conscience.

A soul searching in darkness needs the light that comes from the one who created it, because there is no light in yourself. In our race to self importance all sensible formalities to gain is being abandoned and others become nameless faces that stand in the way of our progress. Until at last fraud, anger and violence becomes our only means to gain what we want.

In the Bible, a man named John talking about Jesus wrote, In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

And Jesus spoke, “I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows Me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.”

The light of man is Jesus Christ and he points to the knowledge of God that we receive in our worship to him.

When we choose to love him we will live to please the one we love. And in that love a impartation from the creator to the created sheds light on our thoughts setting in place what is right that you might truly understand and experience life.

John wrote, “We love because he first loved us.”

Another man named Paul wrote about the other side of the coin.

He wrote in Romans chapter 1 of the Bible, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served something created instead of the creator… And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful.”

Those who acknowledge God, do you love the lord your God with your everything?

If you don’t do this what Jesus called the greatest command, how then will you have ability to keep the second command “to love your neighbor as yourself?”

For this you will be judged.

Mark Balicki

Iron Mountain