"Each man is a slave to his own spirit."
During the days of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, hard work was the high moral, the principle behind the Greatest Commandment of the spirit of the age. The Classical Era has been cited as a time when beauty was held in highest reverence. Tolerance and equality command the pens of today's historians, and we think in terms of ourselves. And how could we not?
The great issue of all time has been personal liberty, and it has never been achieved, nor (praise Heaven) will it be, in the modern sense. The list of totalistic libertarians stretches from Adam to Judas to me, and yet each man (including my students, with little prompting) can recognize the fact that he is enslaved. The high vocabulary includes "success" and "adventure" and "love," but each of these has taken on a personal meaning and lost its value. Should I be a slave to any of these things, as many are, indeed, my life will be an enslavement to my own selfish spirit.
When I discussed this with my students, they said that we choose our masters. I didn't bring up God's sovereignty with them, because they mostly aren't Christians and are being evangelized to. That'd be like saying, "Become a Christian; you might do it anyway." However, I feel that a short mention of it is appropriate here. Will we indeed be slaves to God of His choosing? I certainly believe so! For I cannot change my blemished spirt for His Holy Spirit. The desire to do so doesn't even originate in me. But I am an indentured servant to the Man of the Cross, doing His work and set free to exist as is right.
1 comment:
ha...I was just looking at my notes from worldview and life retreat(as prompted by your idea to do so at the beginning of the summer...a tad late I realize), and there I saw the idea of freedom as being the following of design...thought that might fit here a bit...that's all.
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