Quick! Tie me to the Mast!

In the series A Song of Ice and Fire, the character Mance Rayder makes the interesting comment that men must have someone to bend a knee to. While he spat this as an insult it does ring true. Humans have a propensity to gravitate towards leaders, have people they look up to, and are, no matter what we think, servants.

What's that? You aren't a servant? of course not how silly of me to assume. you can leave the room now, OK now let's get back to it. Yes. Slaves. We are kidding ourselves if one of us wakes up one morning and says "Oh yes, I am in complete control of what is going on!"

The truth is that we have to, at some level, acknowledge that we are not in control. We are following some code of behavior or thought that has us chained. What are we chained to? Christianity is a religion of paradoxes. Eternal life was won through death, and in order to be free we must be servants. Of course our silly human brains hear this and think "How dare God claim I should be a servant to anyone? Should I not be free?" It is our nature to rebel against this and that is why it is all the more beautiful when a person rebels against their own broken nature and links their mind, body, and heart to serving the Lord.

The truth is, we are put into slavery no matter what we do. The free thinker is still subject to his own ideas and experiences. He is a wanderer without a map. The Congregation of the Amalgamated Church of the Spiritual but Not Religious are still lost to the extend that they have a destination but no directions or guide. The sinful are slaves to their sin. So that is the choice, bond one way or another. While there is another choice, it is certainly the worst of the three: we can always not choose! (which is still a choice) Not taking the servitude of one Master or another leaves one without quarter. It leaves one to stagnate in the cold darkness of the night. To be bound to an ideal or belief is to be pulled in the direction of it, and we must always be aware of the direction we are be led. We are not called to be blind, but to follow. This is true in life and in the everlasting life. BadCatholic wrote a piece on Heaven that was more intelligent and elegant than I can hope to write today. He has it right though, Heaven is an absolute forward motion. "Further up and further in" as my good friend C.S. Lewis would say (I can say that because he isn't around to defend against such allegations like being associated with me). We are Ulysses, tied to the mast, with the world spinning around us but being pulled ever towards our goal: home. Whose mast have we lashed ourselves to? Where is this boat heading exactly?



You guys know how to steer this thing right??

We are all indentured servants working off our debt to our Masters. The question is how will the Master treat us once we are free. For Catholics, in the midst of Lent especially, we have cause to examine who the Master of our spiritual home is. We give ourselves away by our actions. By making our actions an imitation God, who loves, and making God the master of the house, then we free ourselves from bondage only to bind ourselves to a Master who wants to pull us forward, and make us new.