-In the previous section, Paul exhorted those who follow Christ to walk worthily, the way of heaven, to live out their heavenly calling for the sake of this body, all these others who follow Christ right along side me. To live fully into a life of serving and of building up one another - others-focused, others-first.
-Paul now invokes divine authority in exhorting these same believers to shed whatever vestiges of worldly walking still remain in their lives. The path on which the nations tread is vanity, the way of the empty mind. It is empty because it is devoid of truth, and thus it is devoid of God (2Ki 17.15, er 2.5, Rom 1.21). All is empty when disconnected from the Source, this One from Whom and through Whom and for Whom is all. To be sure, not all of this empty existence is predicated upon falsehood or lies, but the fundamental premise of life, the foundational truths about Who God is and who I am in relation to Him - these have been rejected. God Himself has been rejected, out of mind, and in turn He has given the nations over to a reject mind (Rom 1.25). Emptiness. It is me-first, the center of my universe, looking out for number one - the default position of the nations walking the way of the empty mind. Emptiness. Always seeking never finding satisfaction, happiness, peace. None of this can ever be found in more than a fleeting form apart from the Source. We grasp at vapors, our every bucket-list leaking like a sieve as long as we are disconnected from our Creator, as long as we conduct ourselves in ways which are devoid of truth about Him (cf Jer 2.13).
-It is the Law of Futility (cf Rom 8.20) - all of creation enslaved to the temporal reality of the cotton candy syndrome - nothing satisfies. Nothing. Satisfies. Not ever, ultimately. Nothing enjoyed apart from my Creator, not one created thing will provide anything more than a fleeting sensation of satisfaction, promising and tantalizing as it may appear at the outset. The corollary Law of Diminishing Returns insures that invariably I will need more and more of the same to subsequently achieve a similar level of satisfaction (which is still fleeting at best), or tedium will set in and I will grow tired and increasingly dissatisfied with this one and move on to the next new big thing. This is the way of the nations, always seeking, never finding, and the question arises, ‘Is this all there is?’ - a gnawing sense that there is more to life than this way of emptiness. And we either choose the red pill like Neo where we wake up and begin a pursuit of the truth (which we ultimately find in Jesus), or we choose the blue pill, we supress the questions and continue our comatose existence, striving after the wind and filling our hearts with so much cotton candy. The matrix has you, Neo. Choose the red pill...
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