“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” — Romans 12:2
True freedom is not found in the world’s illusions, but in the quiet rebellion of dying to its lies and rising again in Christ. —D.
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We burn through our days chasing what does not last—things that shine for a while, that promise much, but in the end, leave us emptier than before. The world lays out its feast of hollow things, and we take and take, blind to the hunger that deepens with each bite. We spend our strength on air, on things that cannot hold the weight of a soul. But that strength was never meant to be wasted—it was meant to be turned toward Christ, the God-Man, the only one who does not fade.
The world tells us to rebel, to break away, to seek new freedoms. But these are not true rebellions; they are only new chains, new masters, new gods that hold men tighter than before. Resurrection does not come from the shallow uprisings of this age, the mindless breaking of old ways only to kneel before something worse. True rebellion is quieter, fiercer. It is the fight against all that draws us from God, the battle against the slow numbing of the soul. It is in saying no—to greed, to ease, to the empty comforts that promise much but rot the spirit—that we find what it is to be free.
This last rebellion is against all that twists our nature into something less than what God made it to be. The world speaks of new selves, of shifting truths, of lives lived in a place that is not real. Virtual reality—a name that speaks its own lie, a thing that removes a man from what is solid, from what lasts. It is a new hunger, a new hollowing-out, a slow pulling-away from the ground beneath our feet. And in the end, it is no escape at all—it is a deeper prison, a turning inward until nothing is left.
But freedom does not lie in running, in escaping, in hiding from what is real. It lies in the refusal to bow. It is in turning our backs on the world’s lies, in dying to its grip, and rising again—new, whole, untouched by what would strip us of our souls. The world will always offer more illusions. But the ones who will live, the ones who will stand, are those who see through them, who walk past them, who let them die and seek the only thing that lasts.