With yesterday being Labor Day, I spent some time thinking about debt. They are related. After all in the world of misheard lyrics the song most commonly gotten wrong is not :Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix. It's the work song from Snow White which goes "I owe. I owe. It's off to work I go." Ok, that's a joke, but there's some truth in it. While there is a small percentage of the work force that works for something to do and to keep busy but doesn't need the money, that is not the case for most of us. I for one would minister full-time, but the back breaking labor that I do now I would do no more if my financial responsibilities were taken care of.
We work to provide for ourselves and our family, to pay for the things we need in order to live, and of course to pay for the things we want. Sometimes the combination of the those things is more than we can do, or at least do at once. A mechanical problem with the car, a flat tire, an unexpected hospital visit, and any number of other things can cause the need for a larger sum of money than we can easily access. Some parents felt it recently having to purchase what their children needed in order to begin school. So, we whip out the credit cards, and we do so without hesitation. Most Americans live in a state of indebtedness.
Part of the reason we don't hesitate to go into debt is that there is no longer a debtor's prison. We can't go to jail for failing to pay back our student loans. But there are places and there were times when if you owed someone and couldn't pay, you went to prison until your family could raise the money to pay the debt or you made arrangements to sell yourself into indentured servitude. At one time indentured servitude was the common way out of debt for most people. I owe Impatient Man too much money to pay. I lease myself to Cheap Labor Man for an amount of time that depended on how much I owed and how much he was willing to pay for the service I had to offer. Cheap Labor Man paid off my debt, and I went to work for him for a period of time. That period of time often became life regardless of what was negotiated, because while I work as an indentured servant it's hard to make additional income. So I either continue to go into debt or my master provides for my needs in exchange for longer service.
We sometime feel this is the deal we have with God. Some of Paul's writing's lead to that sort of feeling. He writes about us being slaves to righteousness now rather than slaves to sin. We are bought with a price and no longer our own. But he uses the common slavery and bondage terminology to explain that we are now free from the dominion of sin. We are no longer slaves to the things that we were once slaves of. Our debt has been paid. But since we look at it as indentured servitude to God at times, we also approach serving Him with the drudgery and poor attitude that we approach a job we don't like.
But this is not how we should look at it. If someone came up to me today and offered to take care of all my debts, provide for all my needs in exchange for my service, and then told me that my service would be tailored to my gifts and abilities, they would provide training, guidance and supply everything that I need in order to do it, and the work would be the most satisfying and fulfilling work that I had ever done. All I had to do was agree to a life long contract of being taken care of. I for one would sign up. It's not a bad deal.
But even that is not what we find in our relationship with God. It's more that we are orphans, living on our own the best we can, but our best isn't good enough. We end up in debt and facing legal ramifications that are horrible. Then in walks our benefactor. He takes away the legal penalties. Then He pays all our debts. We are so thankful that we offer our servitude, but that's not what He wants. He wants a child. He says yes, there are things you can do for the family business that no one else can do quite the same way, and I want and appreciate your service, but I'm adopting you. You will be my child with a full inheritance and a relationship with me that goes far beyond Master and servant. You will be loved. That's what we have in Jesus, not indentured service.
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