More returning to the root, Christ.
I haven’t been posting for quite a while now. Maybe you noticed, maybe you didn’t. Either way, I’ve been thinking many times about writing something, but I couldn’t quite grasp yet what was going on inside my head. Plus, I am enjoying time away from social media a lot.
There are a few things I want to talk about, and the first one is a video I saw on TikTok a while ago. You know those videos where people go up to someone and ask them, “How did you get rich?” Well, this wasn’t the question, but it was something like that. I can’t remember the specific question anymore. Anyhow, the conversation was with this well-dressed older man, and he told the interviewer that he went into an abbey as a monk when he was forty years old after hearing the voice of God telling him to. He spent a little over twenty years in solitude until the voice again told him to go. He was asked, “What did you learn when all you could do was pray, meditate, read, garden, etc., and you had no connection to the outside world?”
His answer was, “My world got bigger.”
The conversation went on for a little longer, but I was so struck by the answer, “My world got bigger.” Because we always talk about the world one hundred years ago, how you only knew what happened in your own village and you didn’t have to think about what happened in some far-off country, so that obviously gave you a lot more peace because if something was going on close to you, you could actually do something about it, whereas now we feel like the world has gone to complete shit. But we also have this feeling today, through social media, that our lives are bigger, that we get to experience more and know more, but what if the opposite is true?
What if our world actually got smaller and we started missing the now, the birds sitting outside, the sound of the wind, the neighbour cleaning their car, the cashier who coloured her hair differently at your local shop, and so on?
So my mind went on a tour. Is there a reason to be on social media?
Obviously, yes, because so many people hear the Gospel through social media nowadays, but most of the time it is still wrong Scriptural explanation, people are losing human connection, they are not learning how to disagree with each other and still walk through the same door afterwards, and even I notice that I make less eye contact with people because sometimes… I don’t know… it feels awkward. And I think that’s because we are all living online.
The other thing I want to talk about is everything we worry about. Political discussions, abortion, LGBTQ, controlled agendas, the Illuminati, the Matrix, conspiracy theories, etc. But when you’ve been in those circles for long enough, you start to realise there’s no end to it either, and the same thread goes through charismatic theology as well. So I’ve been thinking about it a lot. As you know, and yes, I’m going to mention it again, I do not believe in deliverance for believers or generational curses anymore. Probably some people think some demon blinded me or whatever, some will think I got compromised, and so on. But the thing is, I started realising how far away you actually become from the simplicity of the Gospel, and I myself got lost in it too.
Do you really believe that the problems we have today in the modern world, pornography, LGBTQ, abortion, and everything else, are worse than what happened in the Old and New Testament? The orgies they had, the children who were offered alive into the fire for fake gods… there is nothing new under the sun. But I believe we get lost in the branches.
So I sat with that for a long time, and in all honesty, I’m still praying over my platform because I do want to let go of it, but God hasn’t given me an answer yet, so I’m living in this “currently offline” world. But what I did discover is that I’m a root person. Do I get lost in the branches? Yes. But I always like to go back to the root, and that root is Jesus.
The enemy has us so focused on the branches, but they change every season. The leaves fall off, then they come back again, so it looks like something new, but actually it’s the same old thing wearing a different jacket. And I only want to talk about the root. Why is the Gospel different from a good therapist or a New Age practice? Why does the correct Gospel truly set people free? How should Scripture actually be read? Why did Jesus say what He said, and what did the people hearing Him actually understand? Those are the questions that interest me, and I’m still figuring out whether it’s even possible to share that information on a place like social media. I honestly don’t know.
Maybe our world actually becomes bigger when we slow down enough to notice what is right in front of us, when we stop chasing every branch and start caring about the root, Jesus. You can water the branches all you want, but they will only look changed for a little while. The branches change every season, but the root remains. Maybe that is exactly where I find myself right now.
These are simply my thoughts from the past few weeks. My website is almost finished, and that’s where you’ll find these blogs, recipes, books, and more. I’m looking forward to sharing it with you.
Love always,
Charlotte