The loneliness of number ones

I used to enjoy listening to Fabri Fibra's songs, and honestly I still like them, even though I don't appreciate that he always seems to need such foul language. I am convinced you can get the same result without swearing; but careful, I am not being a puritan, it's just that my mouth ends up speaking of what my ears listen to.

All this as a premise because the title of this article is the title of a song by this well-known rapper. As for the lyrics of the song, they are certainly very "free" and very close to the language of young people today, but that doesn't make them any less true than the text you are about to read.

In my life, as in yours, there is so much hypocrisy around, so much falseness, so many masks worn just to avoid a life suffocated by too much sincerity. Oh yes, because sincerity, even when served raw, is despised and condemned by the many masks of respectability.

This is the image I have of John the Baptist crying out, as in the quotation below:

John's clothes were made of camel's hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. People came to him from Jerusalem, from the whole province of Judea, and from all the country near the River Jordan. They confessed their sins, and he baptized them in the Jordan. But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to him to be baptized, he said to them, "You snakes, who told you that you could escape from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire."

Matthew 3:4-12

John the Baptist looks almost like a Tarzan of his time, banished to a life of solitude on who knows what mountain, but all he needed was to cry out salvation to the world. Yes, he actually looked more like a madman than someone of sound mind, but you read that people recognised in him the truth of those words and had themselves baptised. Those who understood his words well were baptised for repentance, but John the Baptist was clear in stating that after him Christ would come to gather a future harvest and also to clean things out thoroughly.

Translated to today, I would imagine a man dressed in clothes not exactly to the taste of current fashion, who keeps shouting in a town square for people to repent. That is exactly the scene I would see today, because times have not changed: Christ came and was even condemned, He rose for everyone, He sent the Holy Spirit, but not everyone has accepted Him yet, just as they have not accepted Jesus as their Saviour, and that is why we would still need new John the Baptists in every square in the world crying out for repentance.

It is so hard to fight against the masks of this world that even Christians have preferred to shut themselves away in conclave inside churches to carve out a bit of community with Christ, but I believe that God's plan was a worldwide church where the unanimity of Christ's example was to be in everyone's heart and in the simplicity of our faces. Behind the masks there are always faces you would never expect.

Are you telling me to be sincere, even brazen, with others?

Jesus was bold with the Pharisees, but he was not rude. He said things, but he did not come across as irritated; in the truth of his words there was no anger, even though he showed disgust. There is an example to follow and it is Jesus; you only need to build a relationship with Him to understand how He thought and how He acted. To use a modern term, it is what we should always aim to put into practice: "the Jesus method".

Jesus was a man on earth who stripped himself of the robe of King. He was not a God on earth but a man who overcame every difficulty guided by the Holy Spirit, that is, by the directions the Father gave Him. Going back to John the Baptist, this is practically what he was saying: Christ would come and would not leave us alone, but with the Holy Spirit. So if you think that today you cannot be like Jesus, you are wrong, because He was like you, human. The difference is that He had the Holy Spirit. Today He has left you free to choose to accept the Holy Spirit, in gratitude that Jesus on that cross, as a man, nailed your sin and mine, letting us carry on with our lives accompanied by God's guidance.

We forget that we can walk free from the chains this world wants to put on our feet, and we shut ourselves away in the loneliness of the number ones God has chosen to speak to the ordinary, worldly people of this life around us.

Do you want to come out of your loneliness?

Simple! You have an example you can find in the Bible: read it, make it yours, become a model to follow, and the game... isn't over, careful, the game always goes on, because a model like that is hard to imitate, but it can be followed, because Jesus taught us victories and defeats too. God has prepared us for the journey and also for the desert, but not always for flowering fields and healthy air. So if you want to leave behind everything that is only dragging you down, take the example and cry out to the ungodly.

Off with the mask! In this world we all suffer in this endless sin, but suffering in this false patience we no longer manage to hope. The weakest are shut away within four walls to be cared for, and the strong go back out to fight again. It is cyclical in our lives to feel knocked down and then renewed, but it is the Holy Spirit who puts us back on our feet; it is precisely He who reminds us that Christ has overcome the world, has overcome your death, your sense of defeat, your loneliness, your anger, your surrender, and has given you life even beyond death.

If you haven't done it yet and you want to defeat your heaviness, then cry out to God and tell Him you want to come to Him, that you recognise Jesus as your Lord and Saviour and that you want to receive the Comfort and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It is not magic, it is reality. I challenge you, and I dress up as "John the Baptist" to tell you: try now, receive Him and experience His immense love for you.