day no. 15,922: outside interference

"He's dead--- his mother has had a nervous breakdown. They spoiled him rotten. I mean, most parents would be proud of a kid like that--- good-lookin' and smart and everything, but they gave in to him all the time. He kept trying to make someone say 'No' and they never did. They never did. That was what he wanted. For somebody to tell him 'No.' To have somebody lay down the law, set the limits, give him something solid to stand on. That's what we all want, really. One time...'--- Randy tried to grin, but I could tell he was close to tears--- ' one time he came home drunker than anything. He thought sure they were gonna raise the roof. You know what they did? They thought it was something they'd done. They thought it was their fault--- that they'd failed him and driven him to it or something. They took all the blame and didn't do anything to him. If his old man had just belted him--- just once, he might still be alive." -- S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders

Bob needed something solid to stand on. He knew it. His friends knew it. His parents did not. He was dead because he could not depend on them to ground him. He needed something to come from outside of himself to restrain him. He needed someone else to set limits upon him and provide him with a foundation. A man cannot be self-made because he does not bring himself into existence. He cannot dig their own foundation without ending up in a pit. He cannot pull himself up by the bucket he's stuck in.

Proverbs 23:13-14

Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die.If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol.

God holds the world in His hands. It hangs in His balances. He is the arche -- the orienting, unifying, underlying principle behind, underneath, and over every other thing. When we are left to ourselves, we drift away. Without the gravity of outside interference, we float away. 

We are saved by outside interference. We are sustained by outside forces. We are secured by outside strength. 

Without something else to stand on, we sink.

Proverbs 14:12, 16:25

There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

Love interferes.