Willing Slaves

Rom. 6:16 When you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness.

So I wake up morning after morning wondering why I have mixed feelings, why my faith and joy is not stronger, why my assurance and confidence in God is so patchy, why me doubts have so much tenacity. It is tempting to join the chorus that rationalize life as we collectively know it and decide that that is reality – just live with it that way. But something warns me this is not to be surrendered to. Complacency and mediocrity are not God's plan.

Rom. 6:16 came to mind this morning as a wake-up call. It seems that every once in awhile the obvious has to be verbalized to be noticed. What I have been doing is complaining to God that I still feel like a slave to sin in spite of all my good intentions and self-education about the ways of God. In knowledge I am learning wonderful, life-changing truths about God and I am trying very hard to focus on God personally, not just facts about Him or service for Him. That's one of the truths I have been taught to do.

But I still find myself weighed down and moving very slowly spiritually. So God comes to point out the obvious again that some part of me must want to keep in denial or else blame those around me. My imagination is a member of my body – maybe the most important member. And I keep presenting my imagination to be used (slave) by the producers of whatever video is played on my TV. Of course, my mind cannot stop at the end of the video and so it actively reprocesses and rehashes the ideas and suggestions for hours and days afterward.

But since my mind has limited capacity for processing, it now spends most of its ability using the recent input to generate answers and scenarios for my life from whatever it was fed recently. For some strange cosmic reason the results always seem to be somewhat reflective of the input.

So the obvious has to be stated again. If I continue to see effects of sin, then there is likely a cause behind it. This verse states that my member has been presented to someone for use as a slave. Evidently I am the one who chooses to present it for use. It is clear that movies are very appealing and attractive to present my mind to for use. They promise to manipulate and operate my emotions to make me experience all kinds of feelings that I don't usually get to experience in “real” life. They often even flirt with feelings and urges that in “real” life would be socially or morally unacceptable. But in the context of watching a video most people accept that we can indulge in them slightly without viewing us with shame as long as we don't reveal publicly what is transpiring inside.