Perplexity in the 'end-game'

When J said give to Caesar what is DUE and to God what is due. I take it to mean there is a difference of two purposes here that can seem to conflict - but one of them is unconflicted in itself.
If you put your treasure where it is robbed, trashed, corrupted and abused. Stop! Put it where it truly belongs. As Steven Hotho indicates, true worth is something that you can recognize and extend - rather than get from some set of ideas that seem to be what they are not. (Or indeed get from opposing some set of ideas).
What does it profit a man to gain the world if he loses his Soul?
When the 'prodigal' wakes to the true nature of his wretched condition - he regains a freedom of perspective from which to re-evaluate a mind that before he was too busy living. It was a mind of independent private authority - ie: the will to power.

It is hard to articulate this in words because identity confusion is so profound.
If you choose to accept that your life is but a futility in an evil or insane malevolence - then those thoughts are enacting such a purpose upon your consciousness and will bring forth fruit accordingly. THIS is where I see you as being in control or rather in relationship with Thought Itself. Not control over fixing outcomes - but in being on purpose as to what thoughts you are accepting by living from.
Nothing turns out to be what it seemed and the sense of loss and disturbance is profound. I don't know where you live - but if you can get out into Nature - someplace where the surroundings of sight smell and sound help to harmonise and touch in at a wordless thoughtless level.

Loss of true context leads to crazy thinking. You cant change what you are unwilling to own in yourself, and when you have owned crazy thinking in yourself - you wont want to use it to change it - but from a deeper place, life aligns in different ways - if you let it, hang in with and stay in a place of honouring it. Lies are also used as a kind of protection against what one simply cannot face. Compassion is different from sympathy. Unless we open to allow a self-acceptance, we operate on a hidden self-denial - which is another word for lies. You ARE having the time of your life! - but the quality of your unfolding experience depends on what you are choosing to use it for. Lies falsely frame the sense of options available. Curiosity is willing to revisit ideas and beliefs that DID serve you to some extent but now do not serve you. This can be seen as a chore under compulsion, or an exciting adventure! There is always a choice in operation - and so there is always a potential to recognize the active choice and thus HAVE choice in whether to persist in it or focus in some other idea that is more aligned with who you now feel and know yourself to be - BECAUSE of having this feedback of dis-appointment.