The race card, religion card, gender card, poverty card, socioeconomic class card, victim card, etc., etc., etc., don’t fly with God and they don’t fly with me, either. If you want to blame your problems on people’s treatment of you, you’ll find no audience with me and even less of one with God. There is an old saying that “God helps those who help themselves.” People who constantly point fingers at other people for their problems instead of taking a good long hard look in the mirror at themselves are hiding from the truth. They need to blame others for their problems because they don’t want to admit they’re the author of their own failures. Hiding from the truth will never bring you anything but pain.

Where you are, here and now, is the sum total of your choices. No-one did anything to you to hold you back or to afflict you in some way. No matter where you are in the world, there are always opportunities to flee persecution and abuse (by getting up and going and staying gone), to better yourself economically (by old-fashioned hard work), to be properly informed (by fact-checking and using your God-given powers of discernment), and to make the right choices, regardless of the consequences.

So, if we feel crappy about ourselves or have crappy lives, we’ve brought it on ourselves one way or the other by what we did or perhaps what we didn’t do.

Does that mean we just let people wallow in their pain? No, of course not. Telling people who are hurting that they’ve brought the pain on themselves is not a message they want to hear or will hear, so don’t waste your time. God wants us to pray for those people, not cave to their demands. But if they’re genuinely hungry, feed them; if they’re genuinely without shelter, house them; if they’re genuinely cold, clothe them. Just be wary of those who are not genuinely hungry, homeless or cold, as they will take advantage of you. God tells us to be as gentle as doves but as wise as serpents.

As for those who are perpetually campaigning for what previously were certifiably insane demands that are now framed as “rights” (so-called transgenderism, for instance), give them wide berth, but pray for them. Don’t tell them you’re praying for them; just do it. Don’t campaign against them and don’t try to argue with them. You cannot reason with people whose arguments are premised on insanity, such as those who argue for the ‘right’ to gender fluidity recognition or the ‘right’ to kill an unborn child.

We followers of Jesus are entering into dangerous times. Laws are being changed to reflect unhinged minds rather than common sense and the Ten Commandments. Jesus warned us that we would be brought before judges and courts, and so we might be. I will never bow down to laws that fly in the face of God’s way; I would rather be judged a criminal and punished accordingly, and I assume someday I’ll get my wish.

We make our own lives; circumstances don’t make us. Race doesn’t make us, gender doesn’t make us, socioeconomic status doesn’t make us – we make us. We make choices that lead to consequences that lead to other choices that lead to other consequences, etc., etc., etc.

If you don’t like where you are, make better choices and keep making them. You have that power.