A person cannot always materially change his or her living conditions when it comes to economic circumstances that are beyond one’s capacity to alter them. Yet, there are a number of opportunities to make positive changes in one’s lifestyle, in most cases, irrespective of economic limitations. Certainly, a person can leave behind morally bad behavior with its attendant maladies, and anyone can opt to become and to remain an obedient child of God (Mark 16:16), regardless of inconveniences or even personal peril (2 Timothy 3:12; Revelation 2:10).
Popular music lyrics typify broken homes and the sin-sick world that appears in every direction to which we might cast our view. Shootings are epidemic; murders are widespread from urban metroplexes to small towns and rural areas. The world is awash in alcohol and drugs. The whole planet is crazy about sex; sexy commercials sell cookies and burgers to everything else imaginable. Such a list could be lengthened indefinitely, but you get the idea. It would be difficult to conceive of Noah’s pre-flood world being any more depraved than what we experience in the 21st century (Genesis 6:5). However, mankind does not have to live that way!
More specifically, neither men nor women, for instance, have to troll bars, streets and the Internet for lovers and one-night stands, over which they experience regret – if any part of one’s conscience remains unseared (1 Timothy 4:2) – just to do it again and again, night after night, week after week, month after month and year after year. No one has to live that way!
No one has to wake in the morning, wondering where he or she is and pondering what he or she did or allowed to be done to him or her while in a drunken or drug induced stupor the night before (Galatians 5:19-21; 1 Thessalonians 5:5-8). No one has to accept this sort of thing as “normal” and the predictable, near daily scenario throughout the balance of one’s life. No one has to live that way!
No one has to be ravaged by the guilt of an illegitimate pregnancy or for bringing a baby into this world that is unplanned, unwanted, fatherless and for which one cannot provide even the necessities of life. Abortion would only compound a bad decision already made – for the fleshly passion of a fleeting moment (Hebrews 11:25; 1 John 2:16). No one has to live that way!
No one has to live his or her life in the shadows of ill-fated counterculture derivations from what in any century has been universally revered as virtuous (Romans 13:3; 1 Peter 2:13-14; 3:13). No one has to live in such a paranoid way as to fear from whom, where and when will come the inevitable, violent reprisal from those we have wronged – “did unto them before they did unto me” (Matthew 7:12). No one has to live that way!
No one has to live a solely, self-serving life tied directly and only to one’s physical existence on this big mud ball of woe. No one has to live that way! Instead, our destinies are larger than the saga of daily survival sprinkled with a little amusement along life’s pothole highway to nowhere, because within each of us is a soul (Romans 7:22; Ephesians 3:16) in a temporary fleshly, bodily home, which soul will ultimately return to God (Ecclesiastes 12:7), who then will make an eternal disposition of it (Matthew 25:46). Spiritually speaking, none of us are homesteaders, but each of us is a pilgrim (Hebrews 11:13; 1 Peter 2:11) – either traveling heaven’s interstate or the Devil’s detour to hell (Matthew 7:13-14). Regrettably, most of this world’s population is traveling heaven’s bypass – a thoroughfare constructed by Satan himself, which will speedily and certainly bring its wayfarers to him forever in the fiery furnace (Matthew 13:41-42). No one has to live that way!
Anyone can choose (Joshua 24:15) for himself or herself to set aside the carnality of this world, and rather to willfully (Revelation 22:17) opt for righteousness, which has the promise of blessings in this life and in the eternal life to come (Acts 14:17; 2 Peter 1:3). Furthermore, even “morally good people” need to abide in Jesus Christ with all that means, beginning with becoming true Christians (Romans 10:17; John 8:24; Luke 13:3; Matthew 10:32-33; Mark 16:16) – not denominationalists – but Christians only (Acts 11:26; 26:28; 1 Peter 4:16). Even Christians need encouragement to do better. “Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life…” (Philippians 2:14-16 NKJV). The sin-sick and dying world is all around every one of us, but no one has to live that way!
