- "We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives with the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment." (C. S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters)
If you ingest the jealousy, your world will crumble all the more. So you're rubbing and scrubbing, "I want none of this, get it off me!" You plead. You cry. You beg. We have struggled with comparison, we have suffered through defeat, we have fought off all the prejudice, we have waddled in this sad melody. Jealousy. Ugh jealousy. God, heal me from this disease. But you know no other way, you have long lived inside this vault. Jealousy started so insignificant. That time your friend was more popular. Ever since those guys called you all those nasty words. And don't forget the rumours that weren't even liable. But suddenly you began to obsess about the thoughts of other folks. And you wondered and you wrestled and you forgot how not to care. Your life became a judgement board, as you looked down at yourself. The worst critic of all was hiding behind your nose. When people told you you were beautiful, and when they laughed at all your jokes. "Oh they're just saying that, trying to be polite, that was pity laughter, they don't even know me, so..." You lived inside the lies and rejected any truth. What was once external became engrained in your pursuit. To be liked, to be first, to be right, to be heard. You'd look inside a mirror and hate what was staring back, without any remorse. Anger boiled inside as you ripped and clawed at the person inside the wall. Hatred stirred deep in your heart. Words that followed gripped your throat, "You are ugly. Look at your thighs. Nobody wants to see you anymore." Everywhere you went, you felt so very scorned.
That is how a vicious cycle is born.
Can you relate to this at all? Are you plagued more than you endorse? There are days where you are bigger than the destructive thoughts that impair your worth. But there are, honestly, more days that you are not stronger than the words. And even though you've read that you were created with a purpose and even though you know that you are loved so everlastingly, it doesn't seem to change the past thoughts you still sometimes believe. You may have hoped that after high school the world would be different somehow. That you'd suddenly be an adult and everything around you would magically change. But the people who left high school are the same people in the real world. And you may not be in classrooms, but Instagram sure isn't a healthy home. Suddenly now, in private, you can brood in darkness about all the people with better lives, with more likes and more followers. And now you hate your body even more than before.
But the truth is, we're all living on the grounds of comparison. And so we're controlling all the interaction that we encounter everyday. We don't have time to give to others, not like they did once upon, long ago. We're too "busy" working hard. We're too caught up in ourselves to stop in the middle of our tracks. We are more focused on what might be ahead, than on who is around right now. And many of us don't know how to be a true friend anymore. It seems I don't have an evening free to commune over dinner. Not even a little tête-à-tête. But if you want to sit in silence and scan through social media land, well go ahead and be my guest, we've all given hours to that!
Everyday I wish I could throw my phone against the wall, go live in a small town, and quietly discuss everyone's family history. But there is always a better reason that talks me out of that pointless idea.
Jesus is really the only one who can fill up the empty spaces. The emptiness of insecurity and ugly jealousy. God, take us back to the basics of simple interaction. Caring about real cares, casting our pain onto Your chest. Even forgetting to look in a mirror without feeling any regret. Because we understand that life is bigger than our skin that wraps around our bones and guts and keeps us superficially intact. Our looks are just a way of identifying the real person found within. And to enjoy simple pleasures that God allowed us to experience. The taste of good food, the smell of morning air, the touch of loves embrace. Our skin, all two millimetres of our external identity, is hardly anything in comparison to the wonder God has placed inside our hearts. Let's live beyond the 2 mm thick, lets dig beneath what can be gathered in a single pinch. Let's live from deep within. The part that expresses the best of our best selves. The place inside, that was made in the image of our loving Maker. Our body? A home of rest, where our Messiah longs to dwell. Though I will never fully comprehend how Jesus walked in a body like ours, with skin and with bones and with teeth and with scars. But I'm so thankful that He made a way for us to live inside our humanity, and showed us how not to be controlled by the pull of our weightless skin.
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