January 19, 1999
Will the VLT question ever be settled? A provincial vote recorded public opinion but somehow the matter is still up in the air. Human rights continue to blur the issue.
Rights, a worldwide hot topic, spans the extremes. For instance, minority groups cry for the right to be heard and teenagers demand the right to drive the family car. Women ask for equal pay for equal work and my grandchildren each want the right to the TV remote. Criminals ask for the right to vote and dissatisfied spouses think they have the right to be unfaithful. Writers demand their copyrights and everyone wants to stand at the front of the line.
Which demands are legitimate? How can anyone know? In many cases, if all are equally valid still some must give in to others. So who decides which rights take priority?
It is irrational to give looters the right to enter broken windows and take what they want whenever they want it. It is also irrational to give angry people the right to express their feelings by spraying a shotgun in a school ground. Is it irrational to give people the right to gamble?
Of course playing VLTs is not the same as stealing or killing but excessive or compulsive gambling takes a toll on innocent people. How much is excessive? Can human rights have limits in this case? Is it possible to agree on what those limits should be?
Endless questions with debatable answers should make us ask what God says but the Bible says nothing about VLTs and very little about gambling. It does mention human rights.
God defines rights and freedom far differently than we do. While He allows us choices, He does not define that freedom as a right to do whatever we want. Instead, He says “not all things are beneficial.” In God’s mind, making choices is a privilege, a responsibility, even an opportunity. He also says if we think we are free to fulfill our own wants, we are actually slaves.
How can this be? To understand God’s perspective, we have to realize that the essence of sin is selfishness. When we do our own thing contrary to the commands of God, we sin. The New Testament book of Romans asks, “Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey . . . ?”
God says: choose to either serve Him and be free to become all He intended when He created us, or choose to be a slave to ourselves and sin. This is strong talk, but He gives no other options.
Slaves are unpaid workers who cannot say no to their boss. This sounds like a person addicted to gambling. VLTs rarely pay back the people who use them. Instead, they are designed to make a profit. Not only that, they rob people of discernment. In thinking they are doing as they please, gamblers are actually in bondage to an expensive, thrill-seeking habit they cannot break.
Families of gambling slaves also pay the price of this so-called “freedom.” They lose their “rights.” Money for their groceries and utility bills is spent on “roads, education and health care” or it goes into the pockets of whoever owns the establishments that house the machines.
You and I also pay a price for this “freedom.” Our taxes go up because families draw more deeply from social services. Gamblers who want to quit need therapy too, and someone must pay for their increased needs. We also pay in pain if the addicts are people we love.
Those who make money on the machines are caught in a “love of money” trap that the Bible calls the “root of all evil.” They cannot set themselves free and will eventually “pierce themselves with many griefs.” This demand for “rights” is costly and deceptive, not true freedom.
Freely giving everyone the “right” to gamble results in huge losses. Everyone is trapped by one side of it or another — and everyone pays a price.
Showing posts with label slavery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label slavery. Show all posts
Friday, August 11, 2017
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Everyone serves a master ................ Parables 580
January 20, 1998
A simple statistic reveals human attitudes. For instance, 44% of American youth say if they do not like the candidates, there is no reason to vote. If political leaders don’t please them, they opt out of the system and refuse to support any leader.
Public support encourages leaders but voters’ personal preferences do not determine who makes a good leader. Leaders usually advocate change. Voters do not always see change as positive. They may decide to not follow that leader, even if the change would benefit them.
What if change challenges moral values, personal ethics or spiritual waywardness? Leaders who do this could be unpopular because of it. Does that make them poor leaders?
Sometimes the best leaders are the least popular. For instance, more than 99% of the population of Israel rejected Christ’s leadership. When He was arrested and taken to Calvary, His best friends abandoned Him. However, lack of popularity did not change His value as a leader.
In Jesus’ case, and perhaps in other situations where people refuse to support a leader, the difficulty is their own independence. Some people simply refuse to follow anyone. They fiercely proclaim self-reliance and will not let someone else tell them what to do.
The universal cry for freedom often means that kind of freedom. We are just like the Old Testament prophet Isaiah said we are— prone to turn to our own way. However, the Word of God says everyone is in bondage to something. Doing our own thing does not make us free. If we follow our own desires, they rule us. If we ignore the demands of political, legal, religious or social leaders, we will be at odds with a society that does not function very well without some conformity to its rules.
Besides this practical reason to follow social and political leadership, the Bible says we also are responsible for choosing our masters. Some of our options: we can follow our own lusts (they will bring us into addictions and bondage). We can follow the desires of friends (and find ourselves slaves to their demands). We can select political leaders (yet we are seldom happy with the outcome). Not one of those options gives us the leadership we want or the freedom we seek.
How startling that Jesus claimed “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Yet most people, including the Jewish leaders, did not go for that either. They liked their system of law with its 600 plus rules for life. They liked to think they were obeying those rules. They said of Jesus, “We will not have this man rule over us.”
However, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” He also said if they did not want the freedom He offered them, they would “die in their sins.”
The Apostle Paul restated it: “Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience (to God), which leads to righteousness?”
Both affirm that everyone is a slave to something. Both affirm that those who do not follow God follow their own way, which is sin.
We may not like God’s definitions of our options but we do have the freedom and the responsibility of choosing our own master . . . and of accepting the outcome of that choice.
A simple statistic reveals human attitudes. For instance, 44% of American youth say if they do not like the candidates, there is no reason to vote. If political leaders don’t please them, they opt out of the system and refuse to support any leader.
Public support encourages leaders but voters’ personal preferences do not determine who makes a good leader. Leaders usually advocate change. Voters do not always see change as positive. They may decide to not follow that leader, even if the change would benefit them.
What if change challenges moral values, personal ethics or spiritual waywardness? Leaders who do this could be unpopular because of it. Does that make them poor leaders?
Sometimes the best leaders are the least popular. For instance, more than 99% of the population of Israel rejected Christ’s leadership. When He was arrested and taken to Calvary, His best friends abandoned Him. However, lack of popularity did not change His value as a leader.
In Jesus’ case, and perhaps in other situations where people refuse to support a leader, the difficulty is their own independence. Some people simply refuse to follow anyone. They fiercely proclaim self-reliance and will not let someone else tell them what to do.
The universal cry for freedom often means that kind of freedom. We are just like the Old Testament prophet Isaiah said we are— prone to turn to our own way. However, the Word of God says everyone is in bondage to something. Doing our own thing does not make us free. If we follow our own desires, they rule us. If we ignore the demands of political, legal, religious or social leaders, we will be at odds with a society that does not function very well without some conformity to its rules.
Besides this practical reason to follow social and political leadership, the Bible says we also are responsible for choosing our masters. Some of our options: we can follow our own lusts (they will bring us into addictions and bondage). We can follow the desires of friends (and find ourselves slaves to their demands). We can select political leaders (yet we are seldom happy with the outcome). Not one of those options gives us the leadership we want or the freedom we seek.
How startling that Jesus claimed “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Yet most people, including the Jewish leaders, did not go for that either. They liked their system of law with its 600 plus rules for life. They liked to think they were obeying those rules. They said of Jesus, “We will not have this man rule over us.”
However, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” He also said if they did not want the freedom He offered them, they would “die in their sins.”
The Apostle Paul restated it: “Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience (to God), which leads to righteousness?”
Both affirm that everyone is a slave to something. Both affirm that those who do not follow God follow their own way, which is sin.
We may not like God’s definitions of our options but we do have the freedom and the responsibility of choosing our own master . . . and of accepting the outcome of that choice.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Freedom in being a slave! ................ Parables 303
February 4, 1992
“There is no slave like the person who is free to do what he pleases.”
The psychiatrist who said it backs it up. He discloses that four out of ten teenagers who come to him with psychological disorders are beyond his help because “each one is demanding that the world conform to his or her personal and uncontrolled desires.”
This professional also says, “If these personality disorders persist far into adulthood, we will have a society of pleasure-driven people, hopelessly insecure and dependent.”
Hopelessly insecure and dependent. Interesting. Apparently modern psychiatry has discovered what the Bible has been saying for thousands of years — pursuing our desires does not bring security and independence but great bondage.
It is common to think true freedom means being free to do whatever we please, but experts in mental health say not, and so does Scripture. Freedom is a big topic in the Bible and yet Romans 6 reduces it to two simple choices: we can either serve God as His bondslaves, or serve ourselves and be in bondage to sin.
For most, that is illogical. Again, freedom seemingly means being able to do what we want, when we want, with no restrictions. Of course slavery would then mean being in bondage to the dictates of someone else; and if that someone else is a holy deity that demands goodness, how can being good all the time equate to freedom? Those who think that way abandon obedience to God to pursue their own desires, usually without giving thought to the consequences.
Scripture offers some spiritual insights regarding this kind of thinking. First, Proverbs 14:12 warns there is a way that seems right... but the end of it is death. Like the psychiatrist said, those who go the way that seems right are eventually very insecure. The Bible says they are destroyed.
Also, Romans 3 says there are “none who seek after God, they have all turned aside... and become unprofitable. There is none who does good, no, not one... destruction and misery are in their ways...” Again, the conclusion of the psychiatrist is the same as that of the Word of God: there is no slave like the person free to do as they please... because what they please is so self-destructive.
Secondly, Isaiah 53:6 says “All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord laid on Him (Jesus) the iniquities of us all.” According to Isaiah, simply turning from God to do our own thing is the very definition of sin, and the reason Jesus was crucified.
Author Oscar Wilde, not a Christian, made this confession: “The gods have given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease... tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber, one has some day to cry aloud from the house-top. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace.”
What Wilde tragically never discovered was that God treats His slaves far better than sin does. In fact, Jesus said: “If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.”
“There is no slave like the person who is free to do what he pleases.”
The psychiatrist who said it backs it up. He discloses that four out of ten teenagers who come to him with psychological disorders are beyond his help because “each one is demanding that the world conform to his or her personal and uncontrolled desires.”
This professional also says, “If these personality disorders persist far into adulthood, we will have a society of pleasure-driven people, hopelessly insecure and dependent.”
Hopelessly insecure and dependent. Interesting. Apparently modern psychiatry has discovered what the Bible has been saying for thousands of years — pursuing our desires does not bring security and independence but great bondage.
It is common to think true freedom means being free to do whatever we please, but experts in mental health say not, and so does Scripture. Freedom is a big topic in the Bible and yet Romans 6 reduces it to two simple choices: we can either serve God as His bondslaves, or serve ourselves and be in bondage to sin.
For most, that is illogical. Again, freedom seemingly means being able to do what we want, when we want, with no restrictions. Of course slavery would then mean being in bondage to the dictates of someone else; and if that someone else is a holy deity that demands goodness, how can being good all the time equate to freedom? Those who think that way abandon obedience to God to pursue their own desires, usually without giving thought to the consequences.
Scripture offers some spiritual insights regarding this kind of thinking. First, Proverbs 14:12 warns there is a way that seems right... but the end of it is death. Like the psychiatrist said, those who go the way that seems right are eventually very insecure. The Bible says they are destroyed.
Also, Romans 3 says there are “none who seek after God, they have all turned aside... and become unprofitable. There is none who does good, no, not one... destruction and misery are in their ways...” Again, the conclusion of the psychiatrist is the same as that of the Word of God: there is no slave like the person free to do as they please... because what they please is so self-destructive.
Secondly, Isaiah 53:6 says “All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord laid on Him (Jesus) the iniquities of us all.” According to Isaiah, simply turning from God to do our own thing is the very definition of sin, and the reason Jesus was crucified.
Author Oscar Wilde, not a Christian, made this confession: “The gods have given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease... tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber, one has some day to cry aloud from the house-top. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace.”
What Wilde tragically never discovered was that God treats His slaves far better than sin does. In fact, Jesus said: “If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.”
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