There is a popular definition of insanity that is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and others. It goes like this:
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Every January 1st, most of the world celebrates insanity. Times Square is filled with people who watch a crystal ball descend as midnight approaches. Millions more watch on television. When the ball ends its journey a massive celebration erupts. People are excited about the promise of a new year. They hope the disappointments of the previous year will be replaced by better times in the new year. They believe that their new resolutions will work better than last year’s.
But the jubilant celebrations too often fade into throbbing hangovers, just like last year and the year before that, doing the same thing over and over again. People believe they can make things better by their own effort and will. What promised to be new has become old again.
The global celebration of the New Year is one of the enemy’s most effective weapons. Believing that things will get better apart from submitting to Christ is a cruel deception. It truly is a painful, bewildering insanity.
Tomorrow, a new year begins, but apart from knowing Christ, an old heart remains. Apart from actively trusting Christ old damaging habits will lead to frustrations and insanity. Have the courage to help rescue people from their belief that they can be new without Christ. Have the courage to live as children of light.
Help your children to grasp that hope for being made new is only found in Christ. Only he can take what is old, corrupt, and deceitful and make it new. No celebration, no matter how large it is, can change this truth. No resolution no matter how well-intended it is can end the disappointment.
Pray that we will find ways to show those around us the emptiness of trusting in a change of the calendar. Point them to Christ, who alone, can make what is old into something new. Help stop the insanity.
Put off the old and embrace the newness of life in Christ. Celebrate Christ, not insanity.
You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:22-24)