“We will cure this dirty old disease. Cause if you gots the poison, I gots the remedy.” Jason Mraz
The computer was so hot it was smoking. My friends and relatives have found new and inventive ways to ridicule each other on social media and I am an abject bystander. It’s the stuff of nightmares. Grandmothers gets schooled by grandchildren. Friends “unfriend” people like they are scratching items off their grocery lists. Decades of affection, comradery, and shared history go up in flames and I’m over here with buttered popcorn.
I feel a little guilty about that. But Hallmark has the perfect solution!
Why sit around and feel guilty when I can sit around and feel like the molten center of chocolate lava cake? Besides, who can resist beautiful women falling in love with handsome men while it snows on them? So I plunk down my hard earned pennies and subscribe. Because if anyone can save Christmas–it’s the Hallmark Channel!
After I finish “A Perfect Christmas,” I sigh with satisfaction. The happy ending has warmed me up with all manner of conciliatory thoughts and so I approach my husband to inquire when he plans to finish the ceiling tile project in the basement. (He started 2 years ago.) I am certain this time he will say, “Tomorrow, my love!” But instead I am treated to a look fresh from the secreting end of an alligator. I promptly forget all of my warm and squishy feelings and start to spew colorful verbiage at the man I promised to “love, cherish, and honor as long as we both shall live.” And then I pull up Hallmark’s murder mystery selection to get some fresh ideas for, um, hairstyles and fashion.
I have become so conditioned to my love for happy endings that I think every story should have one. Therefore, I don’t know what to do with the other humans I live with when they don’t conform to the Hallmark ideal. Strangely enough, I never considered this a form of slavery.
If the dear reader is anything like me, you are a master of comparisons. I have attained the level of “expert” for comparing my husband to men I see on television or in the media. Men do the same thing to women. For instance, my husband has a certain predilection for Sophia Vergara. Unfortunately for him, I am not nearly as sassy or sexy–though I can be as lethal if he criticizes my cooking skills. When we begin to think of people in terms of romanticized ideals, we become slaves to ideas of our own invention. We no longer have the freedom to love them as flawed human beings, but rather as the caricatures we prefer.
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” – God (Exodus 20:20)
Why is this important?
I recently went to visit an ailing friend with some housework. We were discussing the various ways people have wounded us in the past and how those injuries have affected our lives. We recognized how the words people use can form our identities.
She told me when she was a child, she and her sister heard a neighbor call them “chunky.” This had a devastating affect on her sister who promptly began dieting and spent years trying to fit into an unattainable demographic. The realty is, both sisters come from a lineage of large women. By “large” I mean, tall and muscular. They also had a mother who was fluent in the art of homecooked meals. As my father would say, “They would be the last ones standing during a famine.” (Like me) they have remarkable metabolisms! Unfortunately, they allowed this neighbor to place shackles around their ankles with a few words. Their identities were forged in a few minutes and it took years to discover that one person’s definition of them was not fair or even decent. Worse, it made them deeply unhappy about something they didn’t have much control over: genetics.
Hallmark channel movies are not by definition bad. But if we are not careful, the ideas they promote can cause us to become enslaved to ideas that make us despair. Worse, we don’t usually know it’s happening and (remain in chains) while blaming our friends and neighbors for not conforming to our version of reality/truth. Have you ever heard the saying, “If you love someone, set them free?” What if that person was you?
So how do we break free?
“For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” – Apostle Paul (Galatians 5:13-14
We must find the key to unlock the chains (deceitful narratives) that hold us captive. Examples of chains include:
“Only thin women are beautiful.”
“A good husband never disrespects his wife.”
“I can only be friends with people who agree with me.”
“I am always right.”
“I can’t lose weight.”
“Politicians care for my wellbeing.”
Freedom begins with acknowledging our flawed existence. Christians recognize these flaws as “sin.” We postulate the misery we endure and inflict stems from our innate inability to love God as we should–and therefore our neighbors. God desires to set us free but–if we are honest–we have affection for our chains. I mean, it feels good to idealize members of the opposite sex. It can be pleasant to demean our friends who don’t think as we do. We enjoy the provocative ideology espoused by the main stream media. Chains have tight controls over our emotions, therefore we must have affection for something more than our comfortable confines. I propose the key is just as God outlined in the book of Exodus via the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me.”
“Margaret, do you mean I can’t watch the Hallmark Channel?”
Of course not.
“Margaret, does this mean I should stop preferring Hallmark Movies to spending time with my actual husband?”
(Margaret nods her head shamefully because she is guilty of this.)
“Margaret, does this mean I have to stop hating my neighbor for being obese?”
Um, definitely.
“Margaret, I don’t know how to love God more than Tom Selleck. I mean, he is so sexy. That doesn’t feel like chains to me.”
Tom Selleck as Magnum P.I.
If we enjoy anything more than we enjoy relationship with our heavenly Father, there’s a likelihood we are ensnared to a fallible ideology. Chains make us miserable–yes, even Magnum P.I. (I’m dating myself here) because they restrict our freedoms to love God and love others well. And I can personally guarantee that worshipping at the altar of Tom Selleck is problematic because the person I am married to will never have that great of legs. But I digress!
In conclusion, I encourage you to practice solitude and prayer. Solitude makes us be alone with our thoughts so we are better able to examine our hearts. Prayer invites God close enough to kindly show us chains we may not have seen before AND most importantly–to break them.
Today, I promise by way of this blog to forsake the chains of chocolate cake with caramel drizzle that I procured yesterday by way of a co-worker. I invite my gracious Savior to give me the grace to avoid hypoglycemia even though it tastes so good. And I pray for all of my readers to find liberation through relationship with a God who delights to set captives free.
Leave a Reply