January 02, 2014
Slavery
During a TV interview
a woman lamented she needed to dust off her resume because her unemployment
benefits would soon expire. The AP is also reporting that even though jobless
rates would drop, analysts were concerned that stopping the long-term
unemployment benefits would result in less money, “…for consumers to spend on
everything from clothes to cars.” Sadly many people in our country have become enslaved
by government subsidies. Paul talks about the slave/master relationship for
believers of his day, “Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it
trouble you—although if you can gain your freedom, do so.” (1 Cor 7:21 NIV) It
will be interesting to see if eliminating the 96 weeks of long-term unemployment
benefits might somehow force people to gain their freedom from government entitlements.
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Gail;
-----Enslavement is a concept with many points of particularity forming its universal meaning, as is any concept. The economic situation of slavery Paul addressed at I Cor 7:21 was a concretely particular slavery. It was clothed with cultural expectations, principles, and laws of those times. The slavery to which we most relate is of a different time's expectations, principles, and laws. These are just two particulars of one sense of slavery concept.
-----Two of a different sense of it also presented by Paul should be about the slavery to which we most relate. “Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” (Rom 6:16) There are no other choices for yielding than to either sin or obedience. Most deny this truth and advocate other options in more differently convoluted philosophies than the world has varieties of parasites. But reality shackles all runners to slavery alike. It isn’t that anybody claiming freedom from this slavery is free by proof of some philosophy or science or appeal to the dragon or Eastern Nirvana or whatever other bilge; they simply have not yet hit the end of their chain. That end drops into a hole called “the grave” through which every human will stand before the judgment throne of the Almighty and Holy God. Then man’s status as having been “slave“ will be proven. Nor does our survival before The Judge being only through an obedient call upon Christ disprove our present status as “slaves”. That is merely the act which frees from sin, and therefore from death.
-----Our slave status is further evidenced in our birth through the will of our parents and the influence of His, rather than by our own. Thenceforth, we either serve the dragon through self or The Almighty through Christ. No alternatives exist, only delusions. And while we live, every necessity of life - eating, shelter, sleeping, etc. - further evidences our status as slaves: do it or die! We are slaves.
-----One particular about this slavery is quite noteworthy. Amongst its general principles and rules is a very fundamental one called reality. It can not be escaped. If my truck is drab brown I can not think it maroon. Indeed I can think it maroon unto trading some stuff for a maroon paint job. But its conversion from drab brown to maroon necessarily must follow a path of very real and physical actions which really did render it maroon. There is no cheating the physical paths.
-----Human psychology follows physical paths called neural networks. DNA constructs some of these, while history, culture, activities, consciousness, and the stirrings of sub-consciousness construct most. Such networks are known as attitudes and knowledge and feelings and meanings, desires, concepts, and all the other trappings of worlds within. Amongst the culture and activities of a population are classes of conditions called incentives and disincentives. They are meant to cause or prevent certain neural networks to form or not, leading to certain behaviors, or not. It was once understood that poverty was a disincentive to non-productivity, that is, need was incentive to productivity. Money was merely a means for the free exchange of products. But the necessity for productivity has been replaced by the distribution of unearned money such that production no longer salves need. The needs of the poor now incite money distribution instead of the productive effort of the poor. The whole organism of a population’s economy is as much a slave to reality as is each individual within it. There is no cheating the neural paths. The economy which tries to escape reality will hit the end of its enslavement chain, and drop into its grave.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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