Slave to our appreciation

A beautiful day (yesterday) was dampened momentarily when a guy who was quite drunk decided to sit next to me on the train. It was the middle of the day, the guy was drinking  quite consistently and only hid his bottle when the ticket inspectors came around. It was one of those slightly awkward situations where you don’t know whether to move or not – true it has put you slightly on edge and that’s a bit of a bummer because you were very much enjoying the sun, but you still want to be friendly (or in the least, inoffensive) – there are some things you just leave alone when you’re a girl by herself on public transport.

Anyway, the long and short of it was that I decided that I’d stay where I was, there were enough others on the train and he was rambling outloud quite interestingly.

“You are a slave unless you are extremely wealthy.”

“I’m only drunk because I like being drunk”

“Today I am NOT a slave!”

“We are all slaves.”

I was thinking a bit about the whole slave and free thing in the Bible – you get your typical passages along with plenty of others.

A very small bite of 2 Peter 2 (a part of the Bible I never seem to get around reading):

“They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him. ” (v.19)

and,

“I’m only drunk because I like being drunk.”

As irrational as being drunk makes you, this statement is interesting.

We often declare responsibility for our actions as a pretense for something that we truthfully cave to. It looks OK externally. We show the world our ‘in moderation’ but in all honesty we are being run by our addiction , or our ‘interests’, our ‘I’m just being helpful’, or, ‘They can’t cope without me’.

“I’m only doing it because I want to.”

We refuse to acknowledge outloud and sometimes even to ourselves that there is something else deeper that is driving us.

We are slaves to what has mastered or is trying to master us. We need to recognise what that is.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery… You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” (Gal 5:1,7-9)

It’s good to be aware.