Stealing From Myself

There Was No Thief – Relient K

For a time I thought there was a thief among us,


I thought I'd track him down but prior to my pursuit,


The smoke had cleared and to my disbelief,


There was no thief cause it was me that lost you.

I don’t think that this is in anyway a new trend, but I’ve recently noticed that there are a lot of books, essays, and songs that talk about how we Americans have become trapped in our culture. Basically, the writers of these pieces explain that the American Dream now comes pre-packaged, limiting our desires and preventing us from ever reaching our true potential. As we age, the dreams that we had as children are slowly killed and replaced with more “reasonable” and “attainable” goals, so instead of reaching for what we truly want, we settle for something much less. Something that may never bring us satisfaction.

Many Christian writers have furthered this complaint, adding that our society is destroying our relationship with God. Since our own dreams have been limited, they claim that our understanding of God has also been limited, so even though we claim God to be infinite and beyond comprehension, we have tried to fit Him into nice molds so that we can keep Him at a comfortable distance. Because of this distance, though, we are prevented from having a true, deep relationship with the one who made us.

Personally, I think that these writers are right, but who is at fault for our corrupted society? They are. Yes, you heard me correct, They. That collective mass of individuals, who through their cultural expectations keep the rest of society bound in tight chains that prevent us from breaking free, and if we try to live in a way that differs from They’s expectations, we are scorned and shunned from society. So what are we told as Christians? Gear-up and prepare for battle! We need to fight cultural norms in a battle to the death, and to do so, we need to be loud and proud as we fight our way on to victory.

I tried this tactic. I was going to be a rebel who fought against society so that others could be free of its bonds. However, I ran into a slight problem: there was no battle to fight. Since we live in a generally accepting society, when I spoke-up most people were supportive of me having my own opinion. Furthermore, when I mentioned the aspects of Western society that I did not like, everyone that I talked to agreed. Basically, I went out looking for an enemy and found none. If there was no enemy, though, then who was holding me back from my true potential?

I was. I am the enemy. I am the one preventing me from reaching my full potential. You see, we have this tendency to blame others. Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the Serpent, and who does God hold accountable? He holds each person accountable for his or her own actions. Adam is guilty because of Adam. Eve is guilty because of Eve, and let God worry about the Serpent. We can spend all day pointing fingers and try to pin down some particular aspect or group within our society that hold us back and destroy our relationships with others and with God. However, at the end of the day, these most of these so-called enemies don’t exist. They are simply manifestations of the evil that is within our selves. Do problems exist in our society? Sure thing they do, but they exist because of individual problems within individual people adding-up to form much larger issues. How do we fix these things then? Not by attacking others and protesting, but by first changing our selves.

Sam Hunley