Every time I write the word God, the same thing happens in the comments.
Someone shows up who wants a debate. Prove it. Define it. Defend it. As if what I'm sharing were an entry in a competition still waiting for its judge.
So let me say it as it is, as clearly as I can write it.
I'm not here to argue about which God is the right one, or whether the concept of God can even be discussed meaningfully. I'm far past wanting to discuss and debate it. I know which reality I live in.
I'm here, and I share, for one single reason.
Patterns.
The seeking out of the functional ones. The ones that make life better. The ones that align with what my being - the Human - is fundamentally created to follow - and which my own psychology and identity have often rebelled against and prevented me from following, against my own best interest, sometimes quite consistently.
Because that's what we're all standing in, no matter what we call it. Patterns and a structure we're subject to - which we either harmonise with, so life aligns with reality, or resist, so life grinds against it, day after day, year after year.
Health.
Vitality.
Love.
Relationship.
Depth.
Creativity.
Friendship.
Growth.
Joy.
Intimacy.
All that which pulls us upward. That which makes us bright, gentle, robust, beautiful and loving - strong in the faith in The Good as the natural frequency we're created to live in.
My experience is that the Human recognises what works. We can see it from a long distance - a life that bears fruit, a calm that isn't performed, a strength that doesn't need to assert itself. And the moment we see it, the path divides. Either we let ourselves be inspired and begin to bring the sacrifice that reality requires of us to harmonise with it. Or we become dark, angry and envious of those who succeeded better than ourselves.
It's precisely that mechanism that lies in one of the very first stories in the Bible. Which is in itself completely incomprehensible. That the Ancients saw it so clearly - already then. And moreover placed it at the beginning of the Narrative, to thereby let us understand that this was one of the deepest and oldest patterns in us.
Cain and Abel. One's sacrifice yields return and fruit. The other's does not. And instead of asking what the brother did that was functional and good - instead of working to harmonise himself - Cain becomes history's first murderer, driven by envy. The story stands there, on the Bible's first pages, not as moral, but as mechanic. A pattern.
And this is where our own time becomes interesting.
Because we've created a culture that no longer encourages us to strive for that harmonisation. A culture that no longer dares say out loud that the right sacrifice costs - that what reality demands in order to give you what you desire sometimes will cost you much of what you believed in.
Instead we've made comfort the measure. We bring ineffective sacrifices and call it "my truth" - as if Truth adjusts itself to us and not the other way around.
And when we then meet those whose sacrifice bore fruit - those who've built, those who've exerted themselves, those who've set aside, those who've postponed needs, those who've made an effort and lifted themselves - we don't act like one who wants to learn.
We act like Cain. We'd rather see the fruit torn down than change our own sacrifice. We just don't call it envy anymore. We call it "inequality" - in the world's most equal country across all conceivable axes - and don't notice ourselves that the gaze still rests on the brother's result instead of on our own sacrifice.
And that's a problem. Not just for me but for all of us.
Because surroundings infect. You can't stand in smoke all day without coming to smell of it, and you can't live in a culture without bringing its tone home.
Live among people who complain, and the world slowly begins to resemble a complaint. Live among people who always have a good explanation for why it couldn't be done, and you imperceptibly stop growing yourself.
But come near people who move with direction, who live in gratitude and bring their sacrifice without talking loudly about it - and something in you begins to straighten up, almost before you notice it yourself.
Surroundings don't exempt you from the choice. Cain and Abel stood in the same field, under the same sky, before the same God - and went each their own way. But surroundings colour the choice. They determine what feels normal the day the path divides.
And therefore the choice of surroundings is itself part of the sacrifice - sometimes the first thing reality demands - that you rise from the table where bitterness is being shared around, even when you love those sitting at it.
And that's what actually interests me. The demonstration of patterns. The transformation of my own being, so it aligns with the divine order we're placed in - and then see what happens. No matter what it might require.
Because the question for me is -
How much of Life can I get hold of?
I want a life as rich as possible, in all the listed axes above and more. So what should I believe in, for that to succeed?
That was actually also what interested me, long before I found myself Christian. I just lacked the key the self-help industry never gave me - because a business that lives off your seeking doesn't survive you finding. The key is that behind everything there's a structure and an order that just is.
That God is real.
I believe it was that order the young carpenter from Nazareth tried to point us into, when he freed us - the Human - from religion's tyrannical power over us -
"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me - watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly."
(freely after Matthew 11:28-30)
It's not an argument. It's not a religion that needs defending. It's an invitation to live in rhythm with what we're created for.
And that kind of thing you don't discuss.
You don't discuss a door.
You walk through it.
❤️🔥🪽
