Good question!
I am 57 years old.
I think it starts with some sort of break up or break down. There seems to come a point in many people's lives, including mine many years ago, where all the past things are shipwrecked, destroyed and dispersed ready for the new.
One thing I have noticed is that people are either getting better or getting worse.
But to get better sometimes we need our illusions shattered so we do not continue on with a delusion. Things have to be brought back to nought - melted down to nothing, to start again and rebuild a person. That's when that person either survives or doesn't. Many don't and that's a sad thing or fog blinds their minds with addictions so they can't even see or think straight. Can you blame them? No. Life hurts and Love hurts.
I always think of how Abraham was told to "come away from his father's house" which involves just dumping your old life and going on a path for a new one, willingly or unwillingly. God will grab you whether you like it or not and call you out. There seems to be so many examples of it in scripture - how great men are called out of their own place and put in a new place whether they want to or not.
It may mean that at that time, you say to yourself, “What the hell? Everything in my life has been destroyed, there are attacks at every point, every place, and nothing goes right". That seems to me the point when we are in disintegration from the old ready for the new if we can hold faith. I don't think Jesus will let you go even if things seem dark.
The sun always follows the rain and we know that. And the deeper you fall into that bottomless pit, the higher you can rise after. You can also mean that when you survive that, you can empathise with others too - as you can know how lost they are because you have been lost and found yourself.
You want them to "make it" but many don't. That's been the hardest part of my life - seeing so many fall and not make it, mainly due to addiction. There is no other words other than "it's just sad" when you think of their end. But many good examples of men out there, show that courage and faith in the face of darkness are needed and we can all fight the good fight if we keep the faith. Learning to control your own thoughts is a good start. It takes years of practice to do that. The film “Space Odyssey” has symbols of how you have to turn off “HAL” (the machine man). There are many messages in Art. If a picture speaks a thousand words, a symbol speaks a thousand pictures.
And sometimes we need all the dross in our lives to be cleared out as we do carry a lot of driftwood and need to shake all that dross off. Guilt, fear, regret, people around that drain our energy daily, all the normal things humans carry in life like a big lump of lead of our backs. But whatever happens to us, happened to Jesus worse.
No man was treated worse than He was and he didn't even do anything to deserve it. So we are supposed to consider it an honour when we are abused, hated, treated badly, even by our own families, as Jesus warned that there would be much strife and contention in every household. It's almost like you are put into the refiners fire to see what's left. A baptism of fire. Where were his friends when he was being abused? How he must have felt to be beaten, struck, crucified and mocked? And yet even He says, consider it an honour for the prophets were also abused, even murdered before we were. This verse should never make anyone ever feel alone. We have many brothers and sisters in Christ we haven't even met yet, let alone those we know already. This gives us hope in the future, even in the face of darkness.
So we must be doing something right even if things look wrong sometimes. Vincent Furnier was saying as much - (Alice Cooper to most) about his Christian walk recently. Even he says it was "Alice Cooper" who was the addict - not him. There is a lot to learn from those who have come through the other side. I heard someone say recently that the biggest "up yours" to Satan - would be to put Alice Cooper as Jesus in a new production of "Jesus Christ Superstar". That I found funny. I helps to have a merry heart sometimes or we can become like "Eeyore" in Winnie the Pooh. Just a misery guts who puts a negative slant on everything. Those people can be such a drag. Even if they don't mean to be.
"Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." (Matt 5.12)
Sometimes you are led to just dump everything and be on your own for a bit. I spent ten years of my life going to the extreme after much trauma in my family, one thing after the other and no resolutions. So I went to a mountain place, rented a house and spent my time with myself going through the disintegration and rebuilding of myself. This was the time I was most in touch with how I was becoming a new creation. I realised that the "putting off the old man" means that a new person is created and the old one gone and departed. We often look back and say "why did I do that? How could I have said that or behaved that way?" Like we were somebody else. It's because we were somebody else, like children. It is hard to even recognise the past self.
Forgiving yourself is the first point. One has to believe we are forgiven. Once we know this is true then we rebuild. If we cannot forgive ourselves, then we should say to our “selfs” “what is so special about you?” Why wouldn't we be forgiven when Jesus said repent and you are forgiven? I guess you either believe him or you don't I choose to believe him.
Become a new creation starts on a new road, a new way and through the narrow gate and off the broadway. It can be lonely though to start, but then if you can go through that, you can go through anything. I enjoy my own company and others around me know that it's hard to get me out to socialise as I would rather be with my music, my family, my dogs and my books as that time on the mountain became a peaceful place. Music folk and writers or artists are people who like being at home (or sometimes playing golf!)
Sometimes we all need to go into ourselves. I know for sure there is a guide guiding me, an unseen hand at work as there are too many things when you get older that you look back on and say "wow". Who would believe this account?
I read many (many) books when I was on that isolated mountain, looking for the answer, not just scripture. Some of them were useless, but others really helped.
One of the many books I read which really almost described how a man is actually built (almost like a machine) was P D Ouspensky "In search of the Miraculous".
His description of life spent with George Ivanovich Gurdjieff who was a mystic, philosopher, and spiritual teacher is not for the faint hearted - not at all! I would NOT RECOMMEND this book to anyone unless you arm yourself with Faith first. As you can get lost down a labyrinth of ideas and must keep the faith while you are reading it. But if you can survive it, its a real eye opener.
This book is maybe for the older Christians who have got out of the bottomless pit and been restored and rebuilt. Music helps too. Bob Dylan once said “music is religion” and not many knew what he meant. But over the centuries, poets and artists have written lyrics to express themselves when the time would not allow them to so openly to express it plainly.
Somehow the medium of music to carry the lyrics makes it so much stronger a lasting impression, don't you think?
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