Insanity? | The People Give Up Hope

Have you ever heard that adage that says that you’re insane if you keep repeating the same behavior expecting a different result?

Here’s a little story that shows how this can be true. It’s a story about training elephants. Starting at a very young age, a baby elephant is tied with a very large rope. The elephant protests and cries and pulls against the rope but is too small to overcome the strength of a large rope. Soon the elephant gives up and accepts its fate.

The elephant grows and becomes a behemoth much larger and stronger than the rope that held it as an infant but it will never even attempt to test the rope again. It will remain in bondage to a rope that it could snap with one tug of its leg.

This may illustrate the power of what we believe. That old elephant had been taught that there was no way to escape from the rope. How often do we here in this new age world say that everybody’s beliefs are valid and real? We assign an almost magical power to what we believe thinking that we create our own reality simply by believing whatever we want to believe. Yes! Believe whatever you want. It’s a grab bag – just choose your reality. How often do we hear people say, “Oh, no, I don’t believe in what the Bible says as if not believing makes it not real? This scenario can be applied to many issues in life. We may get the benefit of wisdom and experience but insist that it is not true only to end up regretting our decisions.

So how can we say that we might be compared to that old elephant? We may have had stressful negative experiences in life and get stuck in destructive or limiting behaviors based on what I call “stinkin’ thinkin’. In so doing, we have abandoned ourselves to hopelessness and fatalistic thinking.

We repeat the very same kinds of behaviors and thinking looking for success; for things to change and never realize that it is our own perspectives that limit us. In reality, we need to do something different. Believe in the tried and tested. Believe in God. I don’t mean that we should believe in the establishment of religion but in the personal and real inspirations of the Bible.

Just like the elephant that believes that his escape is hopeless having been “tricked” into this belief, we also have been tricked into believing that there is no truth in God. It can be well said that it is a conspiracy to make the real thing look phony because fakes make false claims.

Let’s not be naïve! It’s time to get smart and investigate the best of life in God.

Rev.

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