Take another Little 'PEACE'!
By pimping out our Peace and allowing it to be commodified, we are being stolen from God, and even from our destiny to be our greatest selves.
My spirit is very tired. My soul is worn down.
I’m tired of the controversy that has become the social media timeline. Tired of being shown posts that are intended to get a rise out of me. It’s like a constant tug of war that tries to tear me apart.
I notice it on YouTube, too. The algorithm is always trying to guess what videos I’d be interested in, based on my watch history. But just because I watched a couple of Catholic videos doesn’t mean I have an interest in a video by an atheist comparing God to Hitler. What might get a rise out of me there is not the claim of the video presented by the title, but that some people are so stupid that someone would create a video to discuss such a fallacious comparison.
“I’m not hurt by your insult, I’m insulted by your breathtaking stupidity.”
(Hey, at least I’m honest)
This assault on one’s peace of mind and spirit has been the name of the game throughout news media for a long time. No surprises there. But once upon a time, that was not the case. Just in my lifetime I recall the formula for news layouts and coverage being a blend of headlines, positive puff pieces, news items that were just interesting, being neither negative or positive, and in general it was very human-focused. Today it’s drama, controversy, sex, clickbait, and bullshit disguised as good journalism. It isn’t human-focused anymore. No one is writing a nice little story about a couple who met at a USO event during World War II who are now celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. Instead they’d rather write about “This One-Time War Hero’s SHOCKING Double Life” If we click on bait like that, we’re pimping out our peace, and telling the link provider…
“Come on and take it! Take another little piece of my interior peace”
-Janice Joplin
(Okay, that wasn’t what she said, but you see what I did there?)cr
I’m so over it. I’m over all of it. I’m realizing that we’ve all been conditioned— over a span of decades, perhaps—to pimp out our peace. Our peace is valuable to us, which makes it valuable to the media and social networks. They want to have a claim on it, so that they’re able to get you to chase after it. They use fear and controversy to stir us up, and then present a solution that provides closure and “peace” or at least the promise of it.
Here’s a post that’ll really piss you off because it’s so deeply contrary to what you believe.
Now here’s a post that confirms what you believe, so you can feel better. Stick with us, kid, we’ve got your back!
Gimme a freakin break.
Norm ‘the Storm’ Chaser is coming up with the forecast for this week…and you’re not gonna like it!
OhhhhhKAAAaaaay! So I’ll watch this horror story you’ve teased, because you’ve got me curious about who gets killed by the rain in the forecast, and wondering whether I’ll be among the dead. Then I’ll feel all better once you tell me we may be in for some sun by Friday. Thanks Norm, ‘the Storm’!!
Why do we let information brokers buy our inner peace for pennies? The cheap thrills we look for in our timelines and news feeds, in exchange for something precious!
The loss of inner peaces is a slow and painful poison. Without peace, we can’t know God. We can’t come to know and love Jesus better. We can’t hear the Holy Spirit. We see this unitive walk with the divine almost as a distraction from a party, when really it’s a rescue mission to save us from something that’s killing us. Anything that keeps us separated—formally or essentially— from Him, in whom we “live and move and have your being” is deadly to us. It’s not an understatement that the more we are deprived of interior peace—of mind, soul and spirit—the more we are taken off track from becoming our truest and greatest selves, because only God can get us there, and He only works in and through reasonable peace. I don’t mean a fairy tale interior peace. Life always has its natural stresses (kids, work, whatever). But we can maintain peace even through stress. We can’t maintain peace when we are pimping it out.
(continues below the video)
(NOTE: Let me know there are real humans out there, and not just bots and fake Sustack analytics numbers by leaving a Like or a comment.)
I’m tired. I’ve been paying attention to things that don’t matter. Things that pretend to matter, things that people swear to God matter, things that the modern news and social media want me to think matter, but none of them do. At least not in the way we’re told that they do. And they never matter so much that I need to be hammered over the head with them 20/7. Life was sweeter and richer when we were all more ignorant—before 24/7 news, before social media, before websites kept us informed of the suicide rate in Pig Knuckle, Iowa and the declining birth rate in Ping Pong, China, following an outbreak of influenza on a tiny Chinese island populated by 12 animals and two zoo keepers.
Folks, don’t pimp out your peace. Your interior peace is worth a lot, so do what you can to reclaim or reestablish it, and don’t let strangers have a claim to it. You need to preserve it for your family, your community, and for your personal relationship with Jesus.
A real person wrote this. Are you a real reader? I’d really love a little engagement (Like, or a comment). Let me know I’m not wasting my time here.