Trains on a Track to Where?

We all like sheep have gone astray. There is no one who does good. No, not one. The human being and our institutions are hardwired to make adjustments to suit our environment or to make our environment suit us. This is the human agenda down through the ages and it doesn’t seem to show any promise of change. True change is not the adaptive kind. True transformation is not renovation. But we still get so excited over the idea of changing this or that, adjusting this or that, tweaking this or that, developing this or that… ad infinitum… and nothing ever really changes. It only twists and morphs into a different shape. The entity is still the same.

Isaiah came to the disturbing conclusion that he was a man of unclean lips among people of unclean lips. I’ve come to the same end. I’m not pointing to the world and the people around me in bitter complaint because nothing and no one is changing. It is because I have observed myself and the hardwired tendencies of my own mind and heart. Every bit of information that we crave, imagining that it is going to finally bring about the desirable adjustments that we so eagerly crave, only enhances our present condition. We are like Silly Putty, and all the new bits of data we collect to enhance our lives is like another small piece of putty that we tack onto ourselves. We modify the train, never realizing the hard truth that we are still on the same track and that it is actually going to take a wreck to get us off the rails we’ve been on forever.

The first step to transformation is not a step at all: it is to realize all this about ourselves. In fact, to realize this IS transformation. When Isaiah realized the human condition and that he was a willing accessory in its condition, that’s when he was burned. If we continue to live in denial of our minds’ morbid self-protective hardness, we will never be transformed. You may look different, but looks aren’t everything.

The fine art photograph is the creation of my friend Mark Hemmings.