I was reading
Death by Love last night (See Amazon direct link in the right bar). It's a book about the death of Jesus by Mark Driscoll. In the second chapter he talks about Jesus' death accomplishing our redemption. Redemption is a slave term. When you redeem someone, you pay off their indebtedness and free them. One of the things that struck me was that in order to seek Christ's redemption in our lives we have to realize we are enslaved. Sometimes that's a hard thing. We FEEL so free.
Driscoll says that God gives us a conscience to make us feel guilty when we find ourselves enslaved to things other than God, but that some of us wear down that conscience to the point where we hardly feel any guilt at all. We just get used to it.
I think that's true. And so Mark says - read your bible. Read it over and over and over again and flood your mind with God's way of thinking to re-vitalize your conscience so that you can feel guilt when you are off course. I think that's great advice. It will keep you out of a lot of trouble and spare you tons of heartache in life.
Here's another way to re-enliven your conscience.
Over the holiday (New Year) Laura and the kids and I went to the beach near Pranburi. We stayed in a nice hotel. Not a five star. Probably 5000 baht (130 USD) a night. That's a lot of money. A monthly salary for a motorbike taxi driver. But we numb our conscience. We don't live in the world of the motorbike taxi or any other poor people for that matter. In the world we inhabit, 5000 baht is NOT that much money. It's easy to forget how much money that is. It's easy to forget how far it could go to other things.
But God got through to me this year. On the 30th we went and spent the afternoon at Mercy House.
Mercy House is an orphanage near our beach resort. They are one of our church outreach partners. They treated us to dinner. They played with our kids. They gave us joy. 23 (or so) kids. 7 refugees from Burma. No parents.
The Bible says that Christians are to show love to others. How can you love a poor person if you are enjoying the benefits of great wealth while others suffer in poverty. We (who are rich) hate to admit it, but that's not love. Love involves sharing. And not just occasionally. So to ease our conscience we isolate ourselves from the poor. Out of sight out of mind.
What occured to me while visiting Mercy House is that the entire house budget is about 50,000 baht. We spent 15,000 baht on one hotel room for three nights. I am a slave to my lifestyle. It is only when I realize this that I am ready to be redeemed. I am ready for Jesus.
Of course, the irony is the best night of our trip was our dinner at Mercy House, a 25 baht stir fry rice and chicken.
