As do you, ttaf supporter…though ye be old, ye waste the time of your life when you are MOST free to live by the true core of your faith, suffering no loss…yet ye value your gruel as if it is the very Lamb’s Wedding Feast.

Woe to you.

“…They can’t see from the inside, what is so apparent from a distance.

“Moment by moment, choice by choice, they begin to drift from their calling, and no one close to them ever tells them while they’re still humble and amenable enough to listen. The power they accrue begins to gradually silence dissent or to remove it from view altogether.

“These men end up spending their entire lives breathing solely in the intoxicating air of sycophant’s praises; never protected from their own hubris, never cautioned against their recklessness, never alerted to the ways they’ve lost the plot or begun leasing off large sections of their credibility for temporary rewards.

“Surrounded on all sides by genuflecting yes-men and women lacking the intestinal fortitude to push back against the toxic sludge pouring from their lips, they begin to feel more and more comfortable and even emboldened in it.

“As they do, the teachings and the words of Jesus become less and less useful, because those things begin to testify loudly against them, they start to clearly voice their opposition—and so they begin to silence them too.

“They learn instead, to bask in the applause of the salivating multitude, who gladly amen their every bitter word, no matter how reckless or incendiary—when they should be teaching them how to love more expansively.

“As the hateful choir cheers their ramblings, they grow more and more delusional, more and more comfortable bowing before the golden idols of their ego and ambition. With each day they slide further down the slope…”

Source: john pavlovitz – Stuff That Needs To Be Said