There’s this song I heard as a teenager that has been a guiding light for me for 30 years.

I had no idea the effect, or tether, it would be for me when I first heard it, but it’s wisdom has been incalculable.

If you’ve been paying attention to the wind and waves over the last few posts, you may recognize it.

I’m gonna share that song with you. It has to do with where we fix our eyes. I don’t know about you, but in this overstimulating world we live in, I have a hard time fixing my eyes on anything.

Knowing that weakness, we’re going to pick that destination today and sail towards it.

Unless you were into indie music in the 90’s from labels like Tooth & Nail Records, I doubt you will have heard of Crux. Even then, this is a pretty obscure album. The song I’ve been referring to is called Paint. It’s only 1 minute and 35 seconds long.

It’s really amazing what sticks around.

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Perception is reality”?

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, perception is a belief or opinion, often held by many people and based on how things seem.

Some people might even refer to this as the Narrative, like August Burns Red.

Many times, people will try to control the narrative. They’ll speak first to get out in front of the story before you have a chance to hear the second side of it. I recently listened to a message by Mark Driscoll on recommendation called 29 Signs of the Jezebel Spirit. If I had to sum it up, it would be control. Do you focus on having control, where right and wrong fall into the void and you only see winning or losing? Whats the focus of your eye there?

Perhaps your eye has been caught by the hook of seduction. Beauty is, not always but frequently, used for control. Let me tell you, young men, beauty will fade. Time will take its toll and the body will rebel. The hidden beauty of the heart is far more lasting, far more endearing, far more important than the outer beauty. Having the hots for someone will look at what perishes. If externals are where your eyes focus instead of godly character, then you will lose focus on one beauty when you grow tired of the work and focus your eyes on a younger beauty.

You can focus your eyes on work. It can be all consuming to where it follows you home and disrupts who you ought to have your eyes on. Maybe you go to work to relax, or escape, the uncomfortable truth of your home. You want to look anywhere but your home.

Maybe it’s a combination of a relationship and work, where someone you work with is way kinder and nicer than your spouse. In fact, they treat you the way you feel like you ought to be treated. These are dangerous waters, friend. As mewithoutYou sang in Messes of Men, “…and I heard them laughing louder at the jokes told by their daughters.”

Our devices can suck us in, too. We live in an era of the most advanced and prolific barrage of marketing in human history. It’s relentless. What do we want next? We’re never satisfied with what we have. Contentedness is more elusive than discipline with screen time. Of course, to stay on the lust track, our pocket portals to the world provide a bottomless pit of titillations and forbidden fruits.

Which way, dear friend and crew member?

It could be a goal. Perhaps your husband or wife is standing in the way of a goal you’re trying to reach and they become an obstacle. Instead of working together, you become adversaries. Someone is trying to win, here. It could be one or both.

When you stand at the edge of night looking out, do you only see darkness? Or do you see where the light you know is there has not yet broken through? Do you only see a bad day, or do you see the day that the Lord has made? I wish I could find it, but I once listened to a commentary version of Everlasting Ending by August Burns Red, and one of the band members said, “You’re going to have good days and you’re going to have bad days. Today isn’t going to be the end of either one of them.” That really stuck with me.

What do you see, dear friend?

Do you only see what’s wrong with the world instead of what’s right? Do you only see bridges that have fallen and not ones that remain supportive? Do you only see where your spouse continues to sin and fail and not where God has grown them over the years? Do you only see what they aren’t doing for you instead of asking what you could do for them? Trust me, as a man trained as an automotive mechanic, I know what it’s like to only see what’s wrong and out of place.

What are you focusing your eyes on?

Have the unbelievable clickbait links which take you to articles that don’t deliver pulled you in? Is the news driving you by outrage to keep their numbers up? Maybe it’s the item shop in Fortnite that’s incessantly reeling you in with the hook of scarcity because hey, the item shop refreshes daily and you never know when that new skin is going to come back. Is the tangled web of politics, 4D chess, and AI sweeping you up into a fog where it’s difficult to tell what’s an apparition and what’s reality? All the while, it’s so easy to lose focus on your closest neighbors. They’re jerks anyway, right?

Are you bitter? Has an offense lodged itself so deep in your eye where you can only see what someone did to you and not how you contributed to the situation? Have you been manipulated? Can you still remember with exacting detail the betrayal of someone you once trusted? Will you continue to choke them and keep them at arms distance until it feels like they’ve paid what they owe and you’re satisfied? Is the only thing in your vision the NO that another person said to you? I mean, how dare they tell you no? Who do they think the are? No amount of their blood dripping off the end of your fingertips will satisfy the thirst of your bitter resentment.

All of these can blind an eye. That makes it impossible to focus on anything beyond the plank blinding us.

Blind eyes lead us into darkness and there’s pits out there, brothers and sisters.

I recently had the privilege to participate in my first public speaking event. If you’ve read Pray Then Plow: Practical Steps For Men Who Won’t Give Up or if you’re a regular reader of Fightin’ Poseidon, the ideas wouldn’t have sounded unfamiliar.

At one point, I made this statement:

It all has to do with our eyes.

Are we focusing on a grievance? Are we focusing on an offense? Are we focusing on the lust of the eyes or the lust of the flesh or the pride of life? Are we focused on fear? Are we focused on money? Are we focused on doing anything we can to make ourselves feel safe and secure? Are we sacrificing our happiness for our family or our family for our happiness? Are we focused on all the ways the digital marketplace keeps us psychologically hooked to keep spending? Are we focusing on the next thing instead of enjoying what we’ve been blessed to receive? Are we coveting? Are we murdering in our hearts? Are we dreaming of a better day instead of being present where we are now? Are we focusing our eyes on our devices instead of telling them no in certain times, places, and circumstances to give the first fruits of our attention to loving God and loving our neighbor?

It all has to do with our eyes, sailor.

I’ve written before somewhat of an intro to purity of heart. Purity is when you have a sole focus. Captain Ahab had purity of focus when the entirety of his vision was focused like a laser beam onto vengeance against Moby Dick, the white whale. It’s what made him a great character, even if he was a misguided tragedy, and his crew paid for it.

If the eye is the lamp to our body, and we are focused on that which blinds, fogs, obscures, lust, covets, holds grudges, whatever.. we are inviting darkness into our eyes. We’re saying we would rather be blind and nurse our offenses and precious sins than be free of them and walk in the light. If we’re weaponizing darkness against another individual, how is that not sorcery and witchcraft?

Today is the day to take our blindness to the Lord, if He has given us the grace and mercy to see that we have blindness, and ask Him to give us eyes that see. Help us remove the plank. This goes for Christians and non-Christians alike. We can all nurse blindness.

Where I focus my eyes is where I’m lead in time.

Please I plead, give freely to the strength I need

To keep my sights set on You.

Blindness and sight are the Crux of the matter.

In closing, why drop Crux’s punk rock gem in Fightin’ Poseidon? If you’ve been savvy, we’ve been looking to the horizon for a few weeks in a mini-series of vision to ask ourselves the serious question of what stars we are navigating our lives by. All of this has been an intentional journey.

The first route was church hurt, how the sins of others affect our spiritual walk, and how I’ve seen God continue to draw me in spite of the damage done.

How have the past sins within the church affected your navigation?

The next stop was the news cycle wagging the dog. This was my swipe at politics and clickbait. I’m absolutely not against talking politics, but when we become more focused on what’s happening outside of our circles than inside them, we lose sight of our own crew and who God has put next to us.

Who are you looking past to see the problems in this world?

Then we sailed into The Red Tide of AI, which is massively influential. In addition to the journalism of our era, and news articles that care more about you clicking and driving traffic than truthfully informing you, all of that has been amplified by AI. There’s also the subtle shift for AI to become a false god, which I believe is its most potent danger.

Where we focus our eyes is where we’re led in time.

We live in the fog of war, and this war is a spiritual one.

Stay Anchored and keep fighting the good fight,

~ J.P. Simons ⚓️

It’s amazing to me this songs that’s nearly 30 years old at the time of this publishing has been hanging around with me for so long. It’s only a minute and thirty five seconds, yet it’s been rattling around in my head for almost as long since I first heard it on Tooth & Nail Records’ $5 sampler CD, Songs From the Penalty Box, that my parents bought me at Family Christian Stores the late 90’s. It had to have been 1998, because I remember owning Volume 2 first, then going back to get the first one.

Little did I know, much like the songs we listen to daily, sing out loud in the car when nobody but us and God can hear, or the ones we lift our voices to on a Sunday morning, that this minute and a half of music would be take home theology that I’d internalize for almost three decades.

For those whose ears haven’t been conditioned with punk rock music, I typed out the lyrics for you.

Paint, by Crux. 1997.

I thought I was so clever when I’m mocked

“Hey, that’s good for you, why don’t you walk your talk?”

Basking in the cheer resulted in my jeer

I found I had to wake up when I looked into the mirror

Now I look great, even 10 feet tall

Or am I just looking at another well placed wall?

Painted on so thick covering the cracks and flaws

Is it me, or do they see someone else winning the applause?

When I’m at home with freedom to roam

Remove restraint and bridle

I find these times making up my mind can be dangerous when idle

The person I seek I’m trying to be strong on my own will and power, not lasting long

This world can offer all the things I need but I find in them no lasting peace

Now I look great, even 10 feet tall

Or am I just looking at another well placed wall?

Painted on so thick covering the cracks and flaws

Is it me, or do they see someone else winning the applause?

Where I focus my eyes is where I’m led in time

Please I plead give freely to the strength I need

To keep my sights set on You, to keep my sight set on You

If 1:35 of punk rock lyrics aren’t a deep enough dive for you, one of my favorite writing content creators, Hilary Layne, created a deep dive video on her YouTube account, The Second Story. While not specifically from a Christian or nautical angle, she is after the same target.