Wait....We're Not Playing By Playground Rules Anymore!?

So here I am, ready for Truth to bust me out of the Matrix; and I am stopped dead in my tracks by a very old truth. A few short passages I had memorized in Sunday school. How could this be?! I'm in college?! I am supposed to be smart.
Oh...do I have much to learn. This is what Slippage, and Failure do; they make us forget...hard and fast.

"But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first." -Matt. 19:30



But wait! That's not...are we really supposed to...how are we going to get ahead?
Yes, this is how culture yields us broken and useless for good works or for finding God's will for our lives. The logic of the Matrix world is completely backwards. So exactly opposite of God's rules that we end up confused.
Success is not beating the other guy to the top of the ladder. In fact, Jesus is telling us it is the other way around. It's letting the other person go first. Success is mastering how to take the back seat. This goes against our grain, doesn't it?

This is where it began. I realized that I was very bad at being last.

"...If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" - Matt. 16:24b-26

When you're epically lousy at being last, it's already too late. It's on of the last warning signs that you"re losing your soul. If you can't put anyone before yourself, you aren't putting Christ's desires above your own either.
This is when I started noticing a little bit of what I had been missing. When I "found" this; it hit me like a ton of foreign bricks. It was like reading for the first time ever. A brand new idea, that was both exciting and horrible at the same time. Something so hopeful yet it made me feel so guilty. I saw myself for what I really was. A selfish kid who still yelled "Me First!" at the world.
I had regressed to a spiritual seven year old.
How could this happen? Where did I fall?

But this was just the first epiphany...I had a long way to trek before I could wave goodbye to the Matrix...