A Kind of Kidnapping
From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope,
2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith.
5 now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, 6 from which some have strayed and turned aside to idle talk, 7 desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm.
8 But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, 9 knowing this: that the law is not made for the righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the unholy and the profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manlayers, 10 for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers…
"All expectations," cautions Richard Rohr in Immortal Diamond, "are just resentments waiting to happen."
Rohr makes kidnappers of us all and therefore puts us under the condemnation of Paul's list of descriptions of lawlessness running from 1 Timothy 1:9-10. In the spirit of Christ's expansive definition of murder in Matthew 5:21-22 which renders us guilty for what we hold in our hearts as well as what we act upon, we are in league with Joseph's brothers as they behold the favored son coming over the hill and plot against him.
By our own scorecard, we would count our ourselves righteous as we skim through 1 Timothy 1 and assent that we are not guilty of the surface sins. We aren't swearing, physically striking out against our parents or our peers, committing literal fornication, or, on the latest count, kidnapping someone. But wait. Consider our reaction against anyone who has gifts and opportunities that aren't presently within our reach.
Even if we would restrain that part of ourselves which would rend his person or undermine his privilege just so he could not use the gifts we covet, sin still crouches at our door. Ready with self-congratulation for our decorum and restraint, a variety of kidnapping is surprisingly tempting. If we can't destroy our neighbor's gifts and opportunities or grasp them for ourselves, we will do what darkened depravity determines to be the next best thing. We will lay our expectations on our neighbor with all their coercive heaviness.
Thus, in our minds, perhaps before we become aware of it and almost certainly before he does, his status changes. He goes from a kind of conscious freedom and favor, striding like Joseph in the plans God has for him, to reacting to the pressure of our gaze and eventually our actions. If his gifts and position are not ours, we would use them as though they were. We would interpose between him and God, our timing preempting God's timing, and we would redirect him to do our bidding. He has been kidnapped without the justifiable sympathy a visible assault arouses.
Our receptiveness, then, what God would have us do with the day before us and all its implicit gifts, is crowded out. We are, possessors of a chain of kidnapped chattel, first concerned with what others ought to do. Before we consider our own accountability before God and the gratitude He deserves for the gifts He has given us, rummaging in our thoughts to find the right reprisals against that man or that woman under our influence who does not do as we wish.
"Covenant not," Spurgeon answers in Morning and Evening, "Jonah's gourd, but rest in Jonah's God." As we are condemned under His Law for the way in which we appropriate individuals and their gifts for our own, the Giver of all good gifts still awaits. On the other side of repentance for the ways in which we reflexively compensate for our own sense of inadequacy by drafting others into our expectations is, in its place, direct reliance upon Him to supply the qualities and quantities we need.
We then enter into community with a completely different mindset. Our circle of influence, then, is not a list of people's strengths and assets we can use to our own purposes. Instead, it is a collection of wounded people to whom God has allowed us to administer ointment from the overflow of what He has done in our own lives.
I don't need to bind Joseph or his dreams. I need instead to bind his wounds, some of which I have inflicted with the fetters I put on him. Where can my ministrations overflow from that balm of Gilead with which the Great Physician continues to treat me? Like the Philippian jailer who in the course of one night went from captor and coercer to conduit of literal freedom and healing, where can I repent of kidnapping specifically because my own invisible chains have been broken at last?
2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith.
5 now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, 6 from which some have strayed and turned aside to idle talk, 7 desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm.
8 But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, 9 knowing this: that the law is not made for the righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the unholy and the profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manlayers, 10 for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers…
"All expectations," cautions Richard Rohr in Immortal Diamond, "are just resentments waiting to happen."
Rohr makes kidnappers of us all and therefore puts us under the condemnation of Paul's list of descriptions of lawlessness running from 1 Timothy 1:9-10. In the spirit of Christ's expansive definition of murder in Matthew 5:21-22 which renders us guilty for what we hold in our hearts as well as what we act upon, we are in league with Joseph's brothers as they behold the favored son coming over the hill and plot against him.
By our own scorecard, we would count our ourselves righteous as we skim through 1 Timothy 1 and assent that we are not guilty of the surface sins. We aren't swearing, physically striking out against our parents or our peers, committing literal fornication, or, on the latest count, kidnapping someone. But wait. Consider our reaction against anyone who has gifts and opportunities that aren't presently within our reach.
Even if we would restrain that part of ourselves which would rend his person or undermine his privilege just so he could not use the gifts we covet, sin still crouches at our door. Ready with self-congratulation for our decorum and restraint, a variety of kidnapping is surprisingly tempting. If we can't destroy our neighbor's gifts and opportunities or grasp them for ourselves, we will do what darkened depravity determines to be the next best thing. We will lay our expectations on our neighbor with all their coercive heaviness.
Thus, in our minds, perhaps before we become aware of it and almost certainly before he does, his status changes. He goes from a kind of conscious freedom and favor, striding like Joseph in the plans God has for him, to reacting to the pressure of our gaze and eventually our actions. If his gifts and position are not ours, we would use them as though they were. We would interpose between him and God, our timing preempting God's timing, and we would redirect him to do our bidding. He has been kidnapped without the justifiable sympathy a visible assault arouses.
Our receptiveness, then, what God would have us do with the day before us and all its implicit gifts, is crowded out. We are, possessors of a chain of kidnapped chattel, first concerned with what others ought to do. Before we consider our own accountability before God and the gratitude He deserves for the gifts He has given us, rummaging in our thoughts to find the right reprisals against that man or that woman under our influence who does not do as we wish.
"Covenant not," Spurgeon answers in Morning and Evening, "Jonah's gourd, but rest in Jonah's God." As we are condemned under His Law for the way in which we appropriate individuals and their gifts for our own, the Giver of all good gifts still awaits. On the other side of repentance for the ways in which we reflexively compensate for our own sense of inadequacy by drafting others into our expectations is, in its place, direct reliance upon Him to supply the qualities and quantities we need.
We then enter into community with a completely different mindset. Our circle of influence, then, is not a list of people's strengths and assets we can use to our own purposes. Instead, it is a collection of wounded people to whom God has allowed us to administer ointment from the overflow of what He has done in our own lives.
I don't need to bind Joseph or his dreams. I need instead to bind his wounds, some of which I have inflicted with the fetters I put on him. Where can my ministrations overflow from that balm of Gilead with which the Great Physician continues to treat me? Like the Philippian jailer who in the course of one night went from captor and coercer to conduit of literal freedom and healing, where can I repent of kidnapping specifically because my own invisible chains have been broken at last?
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