Hopium
Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Ephesians 5:6 NASB
Empty words– “I’ve given up on them,” he replied. “I used to think things would get better, and, believe me, I tried. But people never really change. So I gave up hoping.”
“We thought everything was under control. They told us that it would be done on Monday. But Monday came and the deal fell through. Now we’re left right where we were a year ago. What’s the point of hoping? You never know what will happen.”
Hopium* is the drug we take so that we can believe things will be better, plans will come to pass and life can really be directed. But hopium is a hallucinogen. Plato called hope the delusional belief that we are in control of our lives. Maybe he was right. It certainly seems that way when the drug wears off. Do you suppose hopium would qualify as a form of Paul’s expression kenois logois(empty words). The root (kenós) is also behind translations like boaster, delusion and conceit. The verb means, “to make empty.” These are words (dare we read “promises”) that really have no value. They are audio black holes. Applied to persons, they suggest men or women whose expressions have no stability. They are the opposite of God’s words. His are reliable. Theirs are not. Applied to events or facts, these words suggest either deliberate or unintentional falsehood. The bottom line here is not theological. Yes, of course, kenos logois can be about false doctrine, but it is first and foremost about futility. Vain hope in something that proves to be unreliable, unstable, untrustworthy. In other words, life!—if you really want to get pessimistic.
“Empty words” are deceptions. You and I may not know it at the time, but in the end we sadly discover that these audio black holes leave us with nothing. They are the introduction of Qohelet’s famous line, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” Since most of us experience life with the same frustration as Qohelet, we know all-too-well how hopium interferes with proper perspective. Now we feel like pulling up the covers and hiding until it all blows over. But it won’t, of course. What we have is hopium withdrawal, the painful reality that life doesn’t turn out the way we planned, and the discouraging feeling that there is nothing we can do about it. God might punish the perpetrators eventually, but that’s not much consolation now, is it?
What can we do when the hopium wears off? First comes the reality adjustment. “You were never really in control anyway.” That doesn’t sound very comforting, but reality rarely is. Somehow God’s purposes can still be achieved through all this mess. Somehow. But we don’t see it right now (maybe we never will). The first step is to acknowledge we were hopium addicts. “My name is Skip and I hoped my life was under my control.” God wakes us up with a cold shower. The second step is real hope. He is there. He really does care. His words aren’t kenois logois. They are trustworthy, even if it hurts to hear them. Maybe that’s as far as we can get now. Reality bites. God soothes.
Topical Index: hope, kenois logois, Ephesians 5:6
*I owe the coinage of this term to Jim Roark of Spokane. Thanks.
I think Hopium may chemically related to OKaine. While death due to overdoing is rare, too much use of either drug, especially in Christians and Messianics, produces serious side effects such as fixed facial affect, mild nausea (in others), morbid cheerfulness, glossolalia, visual hallucinations and in extreme cases doctrinal deliurm and exegetical deprivation.
“Ho-Kay”, Michael, I am sitting in a public library in stitches. That is so apropo!
I think even the best of us start out, at least, exercising our own self righteousness because we don’t know HOW to yoke up with God. Self righteousness, however, is as dangerous a delusion for the nephesh as hell ever manufactured, and it has the ability to keep us snared because it LOOKS like righteousness!
I have found that my ability to exercise real faith (TRUST) in God is directly proportional to my ability to disbelieve (distrust) in my own ability. My delusional self righteousness has to crash and burn before I am even able to allow His. My will has to be taken off the throne, but the only way I have ever seen that happen in my life, anyway, is after it completely messes up. False hope, false trust (supposedly in God, but really in myself), false love; self righteousness has counterfeits for it all. Self is a true false religion we all are baptized as infants into, it seems. Only disaster has a way of convincing me that self is no trustworthy god. I simply have no way to believe that, otherwise, but I cannot believe in God unless and until I can quit believing in myself in the place (the throne of my heart) He belongs on. I have no way to dethrone myself. Only the kiss of disaster can break the spell, it seems, that the god of self holds on the soul.
Laurita, Gladly self righteousness does not impinge upon my ability to humor, lest I be bereft of all joy. You closed strong with the words: “Only the kiss of disaster can break the spell, it seems, that the god of self holds on the soul.” Let me remind you that for most men kisses are not just kisses and rarely end there. Disaster and I have made-out in the back seat of an old coupe, in the pouring rain at Times Square, in the seediest of hovels and the best of Holiday Inns. I gave her my best and she gave me her all. Children were born and a legacy formed. Offspring, even illegitimate, are hard to starve of attention. Since the kisses of disaster didn’t deliver the promised relief, but led to ‘baby’ disasters, it may take the cold embrace of death to break the spell that the “god of self holds on (my) soul”. Maybe that is why in the B’rit Chadashah we are so often encouraged to die to self in order to live.
Yep, I think we all go for bust at least once: it may be disaster, but at least it’s ‘MY’ disaster! We play it for all its worth, too. We seduce and embrace it: we hate it and holler at it: We blame it, too, and one of the most nefarious bastards of the encounter it seems we all think is our very own child is Self Pity, which may well be the biggest “baby disaster” of them all. Self Pity is the very tar baby from hell and it has a way of binding us to our past that nothing else seems able to equal, but a person bound to the past is bound to a corpse. No life possible.
I think we all, at one time or another, have taken that whore named Disaster home at least for the night, because we give in to the temptation to feel sorry for ourselves (self pity) which is all the ride she needs, but fear and rage also leave us impotent, too, and the presumption that we are supposed to somehow ‘tough it out’ can give you a case of holier-than-thou’s that almost nothing else can. Then you try out the baby called Despair: surely that one is your very own flesh and blood! And who hasn’t answered to the child named It Can’t Possibly Be Me!
Disaster is there to teach us #1. how to let go and let God, and #2. how to take responsibility in a place where it has been dropped. You can’t do the second without doing the first, however. Those two responses, I have found, put ALL the fleshly bastard babies of disaster back in the cradles of spiritual hell they crawled out of when they thought you were their parent. Disaster shows us the places where God is (and isn’t) actually on the thrones in our lives. Thus disaster is equally useful to heaven as well as us, for the true test of love is who is still standing “when all around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you”.
Disaster – like fear and all the rest of the species of evil – must never be met in the flesh. We must only fight the good fight with the weapons forged in heaven. If we do think we have to suffer through ‘on our own’ we have already lost the fight, for fighting evil in the flesh is the very definition and essence of witchcraft. You might as well be standing there stirring a boiling pot and muttering incantations as to take on the “double, double, toil and trouble” of all those bastard babes the flesh conjures up.
Hello everyone, the gifts and callings to Israel are irrevocable! I must say as I was reading this I saw a man with a hood and it was half gray and half white. Then as I continue to read the hood became all gray and then completely black. What does this mean to me? Deception the man in the hood was Ha Satan the adversary. He is willing and very able to blind our eyes the Lord really wants us to now and see. But the more truth we allow ourselves to hear his lies or uncovered and his Emptiness is revealed.. I once was shown a picture of two children playing close to the water’s edge of a brook. There was an angel reaching out above them. I was told to look closely. I was asked a question what you think Angel is doing? I said reaching to protect the children from falling into the book. He said could be. But also could be an angel of Light reaching out to push the children into the brook. We need to open her eyes and realize that this is not children’s play. This is reality we do not war with flesh and blood but powers and principalities and rulers of this world …….
Romans 15;18 “Now may the God of HOPE fill you with all joy and shalom in trusting, so you may overflow with HOPE in the power of the Ruach ha-Kodes”. Amen:).
Amen Sister
But isn’t “hope” one of the very things that God gave us in setting us aside as those made in His Image? And…..isn’t hope the spark of creativity that the rest of creation seems to lack? For all the engineering capabilities of ants and in spite of being quite industrious, I don’t recall any ant getting off work and relaxing with an ant after work cocktail, then getting dressed in their little ant tuxedos, then go out to the ant opera where they listen to other ants play on their little ant instruments. While they may still be here long after us, the difference is that even in a bazillion years, there won’t be any ant operas to watch. Capacity, possibilities, hope. What Skip speaks of here is the “hope” of the current world system that is designed to fail you and convince you of your worthlessness. ie, if you use sparkly white toothpaste, you’ll have a beautiful smile and everyone will adore you! That’s the “hope” we need to be removed from, and the spark of true hope is what we’re called to demonstrate and instill in others. A high calling indeed. Hope in, not what God will do, but rather who He is.
Only in Bugs Life and the Ant and Grasshopper fables are such things possible.
And now remains hope, prophecy and love… the only one that overcomes all is Godly love from a true and just heart.
Can you delete posts? I made a mistake with one.
Jeanette, You can edit your own posts. It will show as an option for you after you’ve posted. Refreshing your page, or closing and reopening it should work. If it’s a +/- issue, you can click the + to remove a – you made accidentally.
I believe in hope. For years, I wanted identical twin girls. Identical not fraternal. (Identical has nothing to do with family or age.). I wanted girls not boys, I went to the doctor late because I was between countries. My mother had just died of cancer. The first thing I wondered was whether or not God had given me twins so I was disappointed when the doctor said I had only one baby. I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. ‘Will they find another baby?’ Thought I was being foolish. On September 13th after a trip to the States, the thought, ‘How will I feel if the doctor tells me I going to have twins?’ I knew as soon as she had problems with the ultrasound. ‘What? What? Twins?’ They were born 3 weeks early. Identical twin girls. What I had hoped for!
It’s hard to imagine what you, Skip, are thinking about regarding the problem with hope. Are you thinking about yourself personally or are you thinking about situations in general? I would like to see you write an autobiography! This past weekend I started listening to one of your talks on YouTube titled ‘Work’ part 1. I have listened to every single talk that I can find and some more than once. In that one you talked about being a millionaire one day and not the next. How did that happen? The details? Is there a lesson in that experience—-as personal as it could get—-that could be shared? Were you a believer at that time in your life?
In my own life, I know there are people I trusted that I should never have trusted. In some cases, I thought they knew more than I did. Now I know they didn’t know anything and I suffered. Many different situations and people.
When do you stop hoping something will happen or something will change? That’s a hard one. I have already shared a story of hope and I can see how God gave me what I was hoping for many times. It’s like I was quietly hoping for something and God surprised me. I was in a church service once years ago when I surprisingly had a vision of something I was hoping for. Hasn’t happened yet. Should I stop hoping? Is it too late? Did I miss something?
I know now that if you are dealing with a person who is on the psychopathy spectrum, it’s best to give up hoping that that person will change or that he or she will be sorry. It won’t happen. They won’t change. They will never ever be sorry. OJ is a good example of what I am talking about. I listened to one of his talks after getting off and he said, ‘What did Nicole ever do for me?’ The book he wrote which was originally titled ‘I Did It’ to ‘If I Did It’ shows the mind of a person on that spectrum. And there are a lot, a lot of people on it that we deal with all the time. There is no doubt in my mind that their brains look like Dr. Fallon’s. Frontal cortex damage.
Skip’s article, “But Do I Really Trust You?” dated April 2, 2009, may hold some of what you ask, Jeanette.
How can I find the article?
Jeanette, Go to the “Today’s Word” section at the top of this page (Just right of “Home”) then type the article title into the “Search” box and hit “Enter”!
I found the article. Thanks for sharing it but it didn’t really say anything about ‘hope’ or what to do if you are hoping for the impossible. I would like to hear actual stories, experiences. I see things very differently now regarding ‘other’ people and the subject of ‘hope’. I used to think anyone could change if they really wanted to. Maybe it would take a crisis but it would be possible. I don’t think so anymore. The problem is brain damage. Actual brain damage. Then there is the fact that brainwashing is a serious problem. The combination isn’t good. Example. How many people still think that men walked on the moon? Most have probably heard by now that it was a hoax but they still want to believe it. Why? Just look up at the moon and give it a little thought is what I say. It’s craziness. Can’t anyone see through the lies? Was that done to see how gullible people were?
The article touched on the loss of Skip’s millions. The money was stolen. I would still like to hear what actually happened. It’s baffling to me. How could that have happened? A relative of mine went bankrupt because he was involved in a business that a friend of his got him into. They had the houses and the cars and the telephone lines. Ha ha I tried it too but quickly realized it was not good. I was proud of myself for knowing when to see that it was not a good business. The whole company went down later. Some people trust others just because they say they are ‘Christians’ and have the lingo to go with it. They have no idea! I have friends in Japan who are involved with two companies for the same reason. The founders are ‘Christians’. But the businesses suck and they can’t see it. Hoping for the residual income that will never come because they are being lied to and they won’t listen. How many people are trusting people they shouldn’t be trusting? What are/were the red flags in the relationships or businesses, etc?
Hi Jeanette, if I may offer a consideration in regards to your statement regarding hope and your having come to believe that “certain” people can’t change, even if they want to. Take this for what it’s worth to you, and if it doesn’t help or if you consider it an unworthy thing, toss it out. Where I consider your understanding of the situation of these “hopeless” people to be in error is the biblical principle of authority. Without going into detail, it simply states that what ever authority you choose to submit too, will rule over you. That’s the kicker, once you choose, you submit even your future choices to the authority that now rules over you. Note in one case when Yeshua healed a man and told him to sin no more lest something worse happen to you. The man couldn’t change himself, it took another to “break”the chains of the authority that damaged him. Only then was he able to make a new choice. Physicality is not the issue, as it’s only a manifestation of the spiritual reality. That makes the physical just as spiritual. What we call “heaven” (spiritual) is rightly understood as authority and what authority we choose rules over us, that’s why we can’t change ourselves even if we want to. We are not dependent on our “brains” or any part of it for emotional or moral comprehension. There are actual cases where people are born without some of the fundamental organs and do as well as “normal” people. You don’t buy into the moon landing (I think I read that correctly) why do you buy into this aspect of the same “science”? Snake bites are scientifically deadly (by certain species) but it didn’t kill Paul even though scientifically it should have. It’s about what authority you’ve chosen and the rule of it over you. The “physical” will conform.
Good clarity for me, Robert, too.
I know people who are severely ‘damaged’ and are the sweetest people you ever met. Then I know some who act like the most damaged people ever, and they revel in it. People can still choose who they serve, no matter what. I have asked folks if they want to change their (to me, anyway) terrible lives and have gotten the reply “nope”. Apparently, it is still working for them.
I believe heaven plays fair: it gives all of us real chances. The ones who ask, we are earnestly assured, get answered – wherever they may be. If people look to be stuck, they may think they are hiding behind the damage – they may get others to believe that, too – but if the damage weren’t there, I suspect that they would just be looking for another excuse.
At my most paranoid, schitzo times, I still WANTED love to be true, even though it looked impossible for me. It was a long hard climb back out, but I know others who have climbed out of much darker, deeper pits than me. The ones who aren’t looking for a way out, want to be there. That is what I see the Scripture teach, and what has been true for me, anyway. I used to wonder why Yeshua asked folks if they wanted to be well. I have since come to realize that not all of them do.
Agreed, although one clarification I may need to make. As you said in your post, they aren’t looking for a way out because they want to be there. That reply, and it’s a common one, (think militant atheist or something along that line) isn’t “their reply” but rather the response of the authority that holds them. Yeshua said that He was given “all” authority in heaven and earth. While I believe that means all, I think that there’s another aspect in that it’s an ultimate authority. Kind of like when the feds show up on a state investigation, they say, “we’ll take it from here, go home and take a nap”. It’s not that there isn’t alternative authority but it’s that He has the power to interupt it, or even to cancel it. Heaven IS fair, we may get a second, third, …..chance to chose but He wants to be sure that it’s me that chooses, not someone who chooses on my behalf.
I think the illusion that I am an authority gives that other authority the chance to make my choices for me. The years I suffered from the idea that it was ‘all up to me’, I would make choice after choice, but my chooser seemed broken! That is being a slave to another chooser (authority). I was only handed the reins of my life at mop up time, it seemed.
To yoke with heaven is to get my real chooser back. This time I try harder to remember that my will exists to agree with His will. That is the best choice I can ever make.
Thanks for this, Laurita & Robert. I was thinking as I was reading these (on Sabbath, checking the week’s threads) of the demonic(s) in the graveyard. Over time, and because I started studying the gospel texts chronologically and together/paralleled, I came to see this: In a split-second, when he had clarity from that alternate authority he wanted to be free from, he fell at Yeshua’s feet and his plea was his OWN. Yeshua knew this and the healing could occur.
Yes, and Yeshua gave His disciples the ability to “bind” or “loose” as His ambassadors. It’s a GIVEN ability, to glorify Him. It’s about His Kingdom, and we can jump on board, or not! Thy Kingdom come! Thy will be done! ON EARTH as it is in Heaven. And Adam was formed from the dust of the earth.
I didn’t realize that there were replies to what I wrote until today. I got a notice in my inbox but it was too vague to figure out without checking. I am very busy during the week.
The problem in understanding is that there is actual brain damage. When there is brain damage, it’s very difficult, if not utterly impossible for someone to change.
The psychopathy spectrum is wide but the poisoning that has been going on since the mid 50’s for sure is the reason. The new normal is NOT normal. I wish I could explain more but I am not sure If it would be appropriate to do so here. Unless we understand what we are up against, words are basically pretty meaningless. Facebook anyone?
I’ll look you up if you give me the address