At the beginning of our small group last Friday we were encouraged to think of a time where we were asked to do something we didn’t want to do and did it anyway. The context was our understanding of how Hosea felt when God told him to “take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness”. Silence fell in the room. The leader waited patiently for a response. Anyone? A few of us gingerly offered some kind-of-related examples that didn’t quite fit the analogy. So we moved on.
This got me wondering why this was such a hard scenario to come up with. Of 7 adults, none of us could remember a time when we were compelled to do something? I think it’s a sign of the place and the time we live in. We were all living in an affluent part of the USA. Materially, we have everything we could possibly need, and then some. We have, for the most part, total freedom, and as a result we are really never in a position of having to do anything we don’t want to do. Wow, I feel spoiled (and not in a good way). It’s probably significant that none of the participants of the small group have kids, which I’m sure provides lots of examples of sacrifice!
I think our culture has got used to its total freedom. “Authority” is now a dirty word, so no-one needs to respect it. I’m living in the middle of a good example of this, as my neighbors upstairs are behaving with total disregard for the rules of our building. Trying to explain to them that there are some things they CANNOT do as residents, is like beating my head against a brick wall. As far as they are concerned, they can do anything they want. Why shouldn’t they?
Maybe childhood is our last best hope for remembering what it’s like to obey like Hosea did. Once we have “grown out of it” it’s a pretty tough thing to recover, without feeling like we’ve sacrificed our maturity.
Philomena
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