Slave or Free Man

We all serve somebody. Larry Norman says so. I think he's right.

Just today Chris and I were talking about parenting in this light.

When you have kids, you sign up for slavery, as a radio commentator put it. Now, I would never trade this or go back. But as he heard in a radio show this morning, men are slaves to work to fund the lives and provision of their families; women are slaves to the family and home. They are on a pager 24/7, never off-duty, never on vacation - your time is no longer your own. You are always on the clock.

I heard a preacher say that a fundamental essence of our nature is our hatred of being told what to do. Five year-olds do not have the monopoly on this reaction; it is common to mankind. We have our own will, our own ideas and plans, and we want to do what we want to do, how we want to do it. When another will crosses that, we bristle. We don't like it. When our schedules and to-do lists are made for us, when the content of our life and time expenditure is decided for us, we don't like it.

This is one type of slavery, if you will.

Here is another:
It seems the vast vast majority of humanity are slaves to vanity, myself included, as my head hangs low with shame. Vanity in many forms, but all vanity in the end. By Vanity I simultaneously include and infer love of self and futility. I find the one leads to the other rather naturally.
The felt need to impress another human with our own coolness, superiority, or acquisitions and the lack of desire to please God, and more so the lack of fear of God, result in such a wealth of evils and waste. Years and years of millions of lives that amount to a landfill of time.

Maybe I should hold my tongue and not write when I'm this tired? Am I too bold? Meh.

We make ourselves slaves to money, to pride, to people-pleasing.
There is a slavery of service one could submit themselves to that holds monumental virtue, but it doesn't see the droves queuing up at the Lifestyle Line that the others do.
Why? My oh my, we are wickedly evil.

Parenting is a service of this virtuous variety, but it shouldn't end there. May this merely be for me a springboard and training ground to become a true self-pouring servant of God and his kingdom, embracing the least and being a blessing to true need and true lack.

Imagine now, if truly, you didn't care what was thought of you:
if someone thought you were attractive
if someone thought you were smart
if someone thought you had a nice house
if someone thought you were talented
if someone thought you were strong

It would be very freeing.

I heard once, and loved it ever since:


A man is free not when he lacks nothing,
but when he needs nothing.

round, round, round she goes; where she stops nobody knows

Although the evidence can't be seen here, I do actually blog, a lot. I just don't have a computer in front of me at the time. I have composed hundreds of entries, mentally, and proceeded to forget them by the time a computer was accessible. Oh well. There's enough yapping voices screaming for attention in the world without mine getting lost in the mix.


But here I go anyway! yap yap yap...


I am changing. It's kinda weird but really good. My perspectives on health and life, church; my expectations, my hopes, my desires, beliefs - they are all changing. And the vast vast majority of people I know would laugh at and dispense with me entirely if they were to really follow these thought trains with me. Most Christians I know would be offended, scared, threatened, suspicious. Most non-Christians would be as well.

All I can say is, it is a time of change, of flux, of upheaval. Something is going to give. Something might break. Things will be lost, things will be gained. It will be good. God is in it.

I mentioned last year about feeling stagnant, personally relating somehow to waters that weren't integrated into the flow of a stream. You've seen this, right? You know what I'm talking about?


Picture a stream. It is crystal clear. The sun in shining through it, and through the ripply texture of its flow and motion you can easily discern every rock in the bed, even its mottled or solid color. It makes you smile. There is something so fresh and life giving about it. It seems right and natural. Then you look on down the stream a ways, and you see this pocket off to the side. It is kinda covered in what looks like a layer of scum. It is not flowing with the rest of the stream. For whatever reasons of physics and its physical boundaries jutting it out from the center of motion, this little pool is left swirling around and around on itself. It looks murky and gross. You think, ugh, what happened there? blech. You don't even want to touch it. You can't hardly keep from touching the fresh looking water. While the stream only a couple feet away looks like the definition of purity and refreshing cleanliness, this looks like it might hold disease and bugs. If it were possible, the water looks sick.

There is much more to this principle and pattern in our lives. Chinese medicine, and a number of other health disciplines and schools of understanding attribute a number of health issues to an interrupted or poorly flowing stream of energy in the body. It is called the qi in the Chinese perspective. Is it stagnant, slow, or interrupted? Problems will follow - emotional, physical, and spiritual.

I am not ready to present all my applications for this. I need clearer articulations prepared before they are accessible. But I feel there are many.

There is life in the motion, there is death in the stagnation. It doesn't just look that way for fun. We are attracted to one and repulsed by the other for a reason. We are not that different from the stream.

- By motion I certainly do not mean that we need a constant state of variety and change in our lives to be happy and healthy. Good grief no.-

When I find out how to say what I do mean, I'll get back to you.