What Controls You?
Have you ever felt in bondage, like something or someone had control over you? You just couldn’t shake it, and whatever or whoever this force was, directly impacted your behavior, your trajectory, and manifested itself in your emotions. A bad attitude, jealousy, envy, being judgmental, etc. Does any of this ring a bell, or remind you of past or present circumstances that can be overwhelming?
Any form of bondage has debilitating effects. It’s with you 24/7, robbing you of joy, only giving you the song of sorrow and lament. You cannot sing songs of joy and happiness, as your heart is heavy with sorrow. It’s impossible. The slave’s song is a song that haunted all slaves as they heard it in the backwoods at a distance.
Bondage
When there is no remedy, the soul endures in its own downcast wilderness. When there is no hope, the enemy performs its nastiest work of all. How to break the chains of enslavement becomes the needed formula to life-giving change.
Your bondage comes in a different fashion than mine. And it’s unique to anyone you know. Maybe you see no form of enslavement to any master. Your nemesis could simply be that you’re lost in a world of the mundane, not caring a lick about any cause or outside need. Your needs are met, life seems good, and there is a sufficiency within your bubble. If so, perhaps you are within the grasp of a 21st-century stranglehold that has you under wraps and you don’t even know it.
Oppression
Or it could be one of a hundred other forms of oppression, some more obvious than others. Your spouse or superior at work is a bully. Your finances own you, versus the proper order of financial management. Yes, there are many forms of oppression. The question is how to manage through the ordeal, and how to summon enough hope to move the needle.
Frederick Douglass
Why this subject? I’ve been reading a powerful story by Frederick Douglass, who was a slave that became a statesman. I can’t think of a book or story I’ve read in my lifetime that is equal. Lou Zamperini’s story of survival while lost at sea, and later in a Japanese concentration camp, is a similar message but a distant second.
My takeaways are enough to write considerably about the impact of his life on mine. This runaway slave was second only to Abraham Lincoln in his influence in the 19th century. He was the most photographed, and some say the most traveled of any American in that century. The United Kingdom has dedicated at least three separate monuments to Douglass and fully embraced him in his lifetime, even before the Civil War.
The irony is that a faceless slave became the most photographed of anyone during that era. ~The Rational Truth Share on XSuppression
The irony is that a faceless slave became the most photographed of anyone during that era. Slavery intends to animalize the human. To suppress, to ensure the ignorance of the slave, to demean, to physically, mentally, and emotionally beat down the person, so this faceless rack of bones can never even have the standard metrics of identity.
Frederick Douglass had no record of his age or birthdate. In fact, he never knew a slave that knew his or her birthdate. He didn’t understand why he didn’t have an actual date to celebrate the way the white boys did. A human identity works against the slaveholder’s control over his subject.
He wasn’t allowed to see his mother, so she occasionally walked miles at night to sleep by his side on the dirt floor before leaving early to get back to her work before sunrise. Douglass never saw his mother during daylight hours. He had no intimation of who his father was. Only rumors that he could have been a white man. He endured these rumors about his father, and also came to understand that by design, a slave child could not be close to his mother and nurture familial affection, due to the risk of problems when later separated or sold.
Dreams Of Freedom
Douglass speaks of the dreams he risked at different times of his enslavement. Dreams of freedom from his bondage, and to actively work towards abolition. But at times he would be broken by a brutal slave master who beat him incessantly, opening wounds that never healed. He witnessed slave women being beaten until they bled for thirty minutes straight, sometimes in front of their own children. He had every reason to be broken and give up every ounce of hope.
Frederick Douglass served on the richest of plantations, where the rich stuffed themselves and thanked God for their blessings, and the slaves were nearly starved, and their children slept half-naked on dirt floors. Wealth and abject poverty, essentially all under one roof. Methodist churchmen, esteemed by their peers, yet ruthless murderers who were above prosecution. It made no sense to the human mind. Yet he was less than human and teetered on the edge of believing this lie. He knew his place.
He thought he “was a slave for life”, he writes. Yet because he had been relentless in his pursuit of reading, he came to realize there was hope by some of the content he devoured. The very lady that had warmly greeted him and began to teach him to read from the Bible (his master’s wife), became changed by her role as a slave owner, and ultimately became as much of a ruthless tyrant as her husband. But it was too late. Douglas had a taste of knowledge and would only look ahead.
Two Sides Of Bondage
There are two sides to bondage. What it does to infect and poison the soul of the tolerant host. And of course, the impact on the slave. Unfettered control of another becomes a virus for the host. Whatever sense of humanness and civility once possessed, slowly slips away until all that’s left is the carnal life of emptiness, as good is replaced by the scavengers of greed, hate, and evil, much like the hermit crab that takes over its new host. Evil looks to fill the space of good. If the host blinks, good can be swapped for evil, and one’s trajectory forever changed.
Douglass’s mistress (Sofia Auld, the wife of his master), was new to being a slave owner. When he first saw her, he remembers, “Here I saw what I had never seen before; it was a white face beaming with the most kindly emotions; it was the face of my new mistress, Sophia Auld.”
The Influence Of Slavery
Douglass goes on, “Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach. SLAVERY SOON PROVED ITS ABILITY TO DIVEST HER OF THESE HEAVENLY QUALITIES. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.”
Douglass says, “The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon.”
THE PAIN OF BONDAGE
Clearly, the point here is that both the oppressor and the oppressed endure the pain of bondage. But woe to the one who tolerates pride and holds it over another! This fine and gracious woman, who taught Frederick Douglass to read out of the Bible, and had as much influence on him as any person in his entire life, appears to have never made it home to a place of honor. She is remembered for allowing the ilk of slavery to ravage her like a cancer until she had no remnant of evidence of the person she once was.
So what about you? What is that in your hands? Irresponsible power or a willingness to remain humble and obedient? We need to remember that no one cares about our worldly status, our position, title, or financial status. Are we lifters of those around us, or are we in the way of their progress?
Who Made A Difference In Your Life?
Think about those who have made a difference in your life. I’m betting they saw something in you and enabled you to get to a new strata of learning or achievement. They most likely empowered you to become someone who was there all along but needed a leg up. They were anything but a master to you, seeing you as lesser. In fact, they saw you as something more. They were a liberating force for you.
Self-Inflicted Bondage
Regarding the bondage that could be affecting you – you are probably the only one who could answer that. The self-inflicted forms of bondage are the ones that trouble me the most. Near the top of the list is the “victim” mindset. I wasn’t treated fairly, so as a result, I’ve got this or that excuse. You quit because of frustration, rather than seeing it through. Upset with management, you become so obsessed that you can’t function any longer and the once great place to work isn’t so great any longer. You’re ready to move on, but haven’t even been able to be objective about it because you’ve become enslaved to your thoughts in the downward trajectory of victimhood.
Pornography, procrastination, work ethic, and pride – all come to mind as examples of major forces that come against us and push us down. Many of these can rob us of great relationships. We have control over pornography, procrastination, and work ethic as these have to do with our own behavior and they will limit or quash trajectory. They can get you down and keep you down.
A Dose Of Freedom
Interaction with others and the relationship struggles you encounter are part of life, but in some instances, those we interact with can inject a form of dominance or unfairness into our life that affects our hope quotient. Similarly, if you have narcissistic tendencies, you are already a slave to the behavioral flaws of controlling others and your insecurities, as you inflict pain on others at a high price. Simply put, we all need a dose of freedom.
Many of us harbor attitudes and emotions that are a form of bondage. Others tolerate a myriad of excuses as life passes them by. The point is that we need to work on sifting through any form of bondage that we end up living with. What keeps you down? What is in the way of you being your best? You probably know the answer to these questions.
Bondage Is Dehumanizing
What I am certain of is that any form of bondage is dehumanizing. Bondage steals your identity. It’s hard to remember the you, you used to be. It robs you of confidence and conviction. Bondage stifles. It depresses and makes you doubt. It takes you to the edge of giving up. Frederick Douglass made one comment that stands out.
He says, “The more I read, the more I came to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than as a band of successful robbers. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my fellow slaves for their stupidity.”
Bondage Is Redeemable
The good news is that our wretched condition does come with a remedy. Our bondage is fixable and redeemable. And there is a ladder extended down to our personal pit of suffering. If pride weighs you down or you suffering from another form of bondage that has you down, Jesus is the remedy. Put one foot on the ladder he extends to you, and start climbing out. The remedy is beyond you, and the work is already completed. Douglas said, “my hope departed not, like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom, …the good spirit from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise.”
Taste and see that the Lord is good, the Psalmist says. If you haven’t tasted or sampled what God has for you, you haven’t been set free. He who the Son sets free is free indeed!
