"We are hardwired to rebel against the obligation authority tries to put on us."
As quoted from the book "Victor - Breaking Free From a Victim-Based Society" by John H. Hovis Page 177.
Don't you just know, deep down inside that we are hardwired to rebel. Take a look at any family that has a child 2 or 3 years old. They don't call them the "terrible twos" or the "traumatic threes" for nothing. It just seems like everything a parent wants to do or say is met with a resounding, and an amazing authoritative, "NO" from that little creature that use to be so sweet and adorable.
Where did this defiance come from? I believe it is hardwired in us just like the color of our eyes and the fingerprints that make us each and everyone unique. The drive to rebel is a God-given drive that is there for a good reason - to make it so that we will fight for freedom at any cost.
Now, don't get me wrong. That little dumpling of a child that bounces from angle to devil at the drop of a hat isn't necessarily applying that God-given trait of rebelling in ways that are appropriate in all situations. Want to know something really interesting, neither is the fast approaching senior citizen. I often times rebel when the freedom God wants us to fight for isn't the issue. That can cause me to act in ways that can create victims all around me.
The freedom God has hardwired for us to fight for is a freedom that is deep down in our souls. It isn't the freedom to be what we want to be, or to earn as much as we would like, or any of the hundreds of perceived rights that we might think are being trampled upon at any given time. The hard, honest truth is that, in the grand scheme of things the things we think are freedom busters don't even begin to rise to any level of importance where God is concerned.
It isn't that God doesn't care about what we care for. In so many ways, He does. It is that he wants us to use our hardwired nature to fight for the freedom to be all we can be in His eyes, not to fight for freedom that is a result of anything that we look to to establish an identity in this world. Using our rebellious nature to fight for freedoms that we want from this world is a victim thinking strategy that will ultimately create victims throughout your life.
Here's what the Bible says about how we should fight.
Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 1 Timothy 6:12 (NIV)
Our fight isn't with this world. Our fight isn't against those things that we think are coming against our rights in this world. We aren't of this world! This isn't our home. Our fight is for faith, the faith we need to believe who God is in our lives and who God says we are in His eyes. We take hold of eternal life when we choose to stop fighting the world for the benefits of being a citizen here and start to fight for the faith we need to believe we are all we need to be, to be the heir of the Kingdom of God we are as His children.
I believe God wants us to fight for all we can in this world. What I also believe is that we have put too much stock in what we might gain in this world when it comes to defining our identities. This is a strategy filled with pot holes and wrong turns that does nothing but waste our time in frustrating and demoralizing ways.
It's no wonder that we are facing an epidemic of victim thinking in our world today. The Victim-Based Society is alive and well because we have decided to use our hardwired rebelliousness to fight the wrong fights in an effort to get to something God has freely made available to us.
You know who you are. You don't have to fight for that next success as proof of who you are. Go after that next success because you want it to happen, because it will benefit you and your family in many ways. If, however you are going after that next success because you need proof as to who you are I'm a living example of how this doesn't work in the long run. Fight all you can to keep from connecting the success or failure of what you do today to to who you are or victim thinking might just be the result.
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