The Rot That Suffocates the Soul
by Donavon L Riley
If disbelief in yourself and a vague trust in God are all you possess, you will not win any battle worth fighting. It’s an empty arsenal, and you’ll find yourself stumbling into deeper defeats, lost in a labyrinth of uncertainty. Faith is indeed the foundation, but it must be a lived experience, an active force that propels you forward into the fray.
The mind and will require constant sharpening, like a blade held to the fire, refined through struggle and experience. The greatest enemy is ignorance, that insidious fog that clouds the mind and blinds you to higher truths. Our thoughts must be cleared, made lucid, able to slice through the haze of distractions and discern what is truly needed to free the soul from its passions. This sharpening happens in two vital ways. First, there’s prayer—a raw, unfiltered call to the Holy Spirit to burn away the nonsense that clutters the heart and mind. This is not a passive request; it’s a deep hunger for God, a fervent thirst to obey Him in everything, coupled with the humility to seek guidance from those wise souls who have traversed these paths before us.
The second means of sharpening is a relentless questioning of everything. We must probe the depths, examining the world around us with eyes unclouded by the seductive distractions that so easily ensnare us. The world, with its blindness, beckons us toward its chasms, and if we aren’t vigilant, we will follow it straight into despair. Only when we learn to judge with clarity—through the Spirit, through reason, through the distilled wisdom of the saints—can we hope to see the Truth in its stark, unsettling beauty.
The world’s treasures, its hollow honors, its fleeting pleasures? They are naught but the rot that suffocates the soul. What the world mocks—humility, forgiveness, self-denial—these are the true treasures of heaven, gleaming like gold in the dark. There’s a profound strength in a Christian man who scorns the riches the world offers, far greater than the hollow power of a faithless ruler. The strength it takes to forgive an enemy is a force more potent than conquering empires, a victory that echoes through eternity. To know yourself in relation to Jesus Christ, to see the twisted desires within, and to humbly ask Him to break those chains—that is a miracle surpassing even the raising of the dead. In this struggle lies the heart of our faith, a pilgrimage that demands our everything, yet promises the unfathomable depth of true life.