Ruin Your Life in Three Easy Steps

Introduction

You live in an age obsessed with self. Perhaps this isn’t all that peculiar. Since Eden man has thought far too much about himself. Still, the waves of selfishness are particularly high at the moment. Think of all the self-help apps. The Tik-Tok accounts with life advice from influencers who have never had to keep down a job, never been married, and never paid off their credit card. 

I would like to offer you some life advice. I would like to tell you how to ruin your life in three easy steps. Wouldn’t that be useful to know? In other words, I am showing you that there is a “do not push this button” for your life. Furthermore, because I’m so helpful, I’m going to tell you how to make sure to not push that button.

Psalm 1

Now, this is not my original idea. I’m nowhere near clever enough for that. I’m actually borrowing this from the first Psalm. Let me read the whole Psalm, and then I want to draw your attention to the very first verse.

The book of Psalms is like a musical with high drama. It shows us what the idyllic King for Israel ought to be like. It lifts our hope that David is that perfect King for God’s people. But then, the Davidic throne dashes our hopes for a perfect king, because David’s heirs break covenant with God (Ps. 89:39). The remainder of the Psalms convince us that God is without blame, it is Israel which has been unfaithful (Psalms 90-106), and then God shows that He will raise up a perfect King (Psalms 107-150), which of course will rule over all nations with everything bringing praise to Him (Ps. 138 & 150).

But, Psalms 1 & 2 introduces the themes which the whole Psalter will expand upon. Psalm 1 contrasts an ungodly king with a righteous one and then Psalm 2 reveals what that Messianic King will be like. For our purposes, we want to look at what that ungodly king is like. Because that King, like Adam of old, ruined his life. And I want to show you how to ruin yours, so that you actually don’t ruin it.

Walk 

The blessed man doesn’t do three things. Or to suit my title…he doesn’t ruin his life in these three easy steps. The first step we will consider is this: walk in the counsel of the ungodly.

The first step to ruining your life is to go for a walk down a certain path. You are invited to take a hike using the map of a particular worldview. That worldview is “the counsel of the ungodly.” The counsel of the ungodly takes many different forms, but it usually can be baked down to a few simple things: follow your heart’s desires, satisfy yourself with whatever your eyes behold, and don’t let anyone tell you how to live your life. We could march through all the various “isms” and show how they all basically reduce to what the Apostle John describes: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Darwinism says, “You are just the result of time and chance, and are just like the animals” and therefore leads to an “only the strong survive” attitude towards your impulses. Feminism and other forms of Marxist thought says, “You are a victim” and therefore leads to fiery but mostly peaceful riots attempting to establish a just and well-ordered society.

Think of David’s grandson, Rehoboam, who chose to order his policy on the basis of his peers’ counsel, which was to put it in Zoomer jargon: flex, pose, and aura-farm. “Make it all about you.” That’s the first step to ruining your life. Walk as if you are a Disney princess girl-boss. Walk as if there is no God but you. Walk according to a worldview that exalts you above the Triune God.

Stand

The next stage in ruining your life is to become stationary. Camp out in that aforementioned worldview. We’re told that the ungodly king “stands in the way of sinners.” He does a collab with others who have walked down this path of the ungodly. Remember that scene from the movie Hook, where the Lost Boys are trying to decide whether to side with old man Peter Pan or Rufio. Who do you stand with? Notice how much pressure there is to get drunk, party hard, fry your brain with drugs, goon, gamble, and vote for killing baby girls while calling it feminist liberation. Misery loves company.

Remember David’s son Absalom standing at the city gates empathizing with folks. He tells them that he understands their problems, while his boomer dad David can’t understand the housing crisis, or the plight of young people in the 21st century, or the slang. Instead of walking in righteousness and humility, Absalom identifies himself with and gathers to himself everyone who is brimful of resentment and ingratitude. The guy who wants to ruin his life first walks according to ungodly counsel (convinced he’s a free thinker), but before long he stands around with all the other free thinkers who all think the same evil things. It’s like two people who can’t swim trying to save each other from drowning. 

Sit

Lastly, we see the final stage of life ruination: sitting in the seat of the scornful. See the progression? First is it walking around exploring under the guise of trying to “find yourself.” Secondly, it is identifying yourself with the mob of evildoers. Lastly, you join in mocking that which is good. You explore evil, then you identify with it, then you mock all that is good.

Right before King Saul’s reign comes to its tragic end, he’s sitting in a witch’s house asking her to consult the dead. His kingdom is slipping through his fingers, and his last ditch effort is to try to ask dead people what he should do. He covers this evil by asking the witch to summon the soul of a righteous man…as if that will make things better. The last step of ruining your life is that you start calling good evil and evil good. You glory in that which is shameful. To make matters terribly, horribly worse, you are sitting in it, paralyzed in your stupor. You’ve become a full NPC in the Matrix. Congrats. You have ruined your life.

Lose Your Life

But the righteous king, we’re told, delights in God’s word. Jesus says that if you want too keep your life you need to lose it. This is not a call to poverty. It isn’t even a call to become a nomad. It is a call to live generously by humbly living your life in true delight in Christ, His Word, and His people.

But be warned, Psalm 1 shows how an ungodly king ruins his life. But allegiance to Christ will ruin your life in the eyes of those who are hellbent on truly ruining theirs. You either ruin your life by rejecting Christ, or you ruin it (according to degenerate inmates of the asylum of sin) by becoming all about Jesus.

Consider the men who joined David in the cave of Adullam (1 Sam. 22:1-2). They were a ragtag bunch of misfits, despised by the respectable. But they were with David, the true King. In the eyes of the world, following Jesus looks like a complete waste. But in the words of the Apostle Paul, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.