Is Your Mind Being Held Captive?

[HKHaugan]

The natural sequence is from the heart to the mind because we are looking for a way to make reasoning sense out of what goes on in our heart, in the hearts of others and in the world around us. It’s in the mind that we build a system of principles to organize the way our heart responds. It’s the mind that sorts out our experience. It’s the mind that needs truth to build a stable belief. Without belief the heart doesn’t know what to trust which in turn opens it to living only for survival in every next moment. If what we believe is arrived at apart from God the consequences are deadly, lonely and lifeless. That is not just a religious statement. It is a fact. To deny that one believes is denial of the very nature of every human being. Every single person has the capacity for and exercises belief every living moment. The question is not do we believe rather it is what do we believe, who do we believe and why do we believe?

Why? You can’t help believing. Everything we do between waking to sleeping is based on what we believe in to survive from one moment to the next. The job we choose, the people we associate with, the way we spend our leisure time, the pursuit of knowledge, the search for meaning and purpose, the mate we choose and families we want. Belief governs everything. Then also, having an organized systematic set of beliefs to ponder, analyze and apply, gives the mind the kind of program to understand the world and its people. The mind responds to what the heart pressures it to do, to be like, to give a response to what’s out there. How we think sets the tone for inner security, heart security.

So the question arises, is our mind being held captive and how would that happen? You might have heard the expression, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The degree to which that is true rests in facing the fact that apart from some kind of external code or a person to trust, we accept a kind of trial and error approach hoping against hope that we make it. Reality is this, left to our own devices we are driven by the need to justify what we think, why we think it and how we behave as a result of what we think. In other words to justify ourselves is our belief and the way we build our lives. The process of rationalization and self-justification is our way out. No matter what we do we have a ready excuse to meet any objection, “I did this because…’

Think of it in terms of ‘living like it all depends on me.’ Living in a culture surrounding us with a multiplicity of belief systems, everything from self-help books to religions, gurus and philosophies we enter the phase of picking and choosing from what is out there that fits me for the moment I need it. I become the manager in a moral supermarket where brands make no difference. What can get me through the day fills my basket. I become my own source of ethics, morality and behavior Each item of self-justification, rationalization, control of self, playing the ‘whatever works’ game is listed, rung up and totaled. The checker looks at me expecting payment. It’s up to me to pay but I don’t have the funds, nor do I have a credit card or a tab I can add to. Then at that moment, as I look at the register, its lighted figures jar me. The total is not numbers, it’s three letters. ‘Total’ is spelled S-I-N.

That jarring moment of self-discovery reveals sin has left me alone and at the mercy of constantly checking, adapting and conforming to the personal, social and cultural mentality called ‘the world.’ My sin is what holds my mind captive. As I stand there the need for someone to rescue me, someone who can pay the bill, to take away the guilt, to remove the barrier that ended up with a sum that can’t be paid. I’m on the spot with no way out, alone in my humiliation, embarrassment and lostness and the line behind me is impatient.
But all of a sudden someone comes up behind me and says, “I’ve got you covered, I saw your dilemma, I told the manager whatever you need I’ll take care of it and I’ll walk you through the door. Why, you ask? It’s what I do.”

That’s the kind of mind I need. The one I have held me captive. His mind is how I’ll think from now on. Whatever He believes is what I’ll believe. That’s what takes us to the level of the spirit. The spirit level is where we find an open door to fixing, retrieving and restoring both the mind and the heart. Part of my discovery is that I not only have a spirit but that my spirit has been taken captive by sin.

Here is Paul’s view, “So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature[a] a slave to the law of sin. This is where we shift into spirit mode in the next chapter (Rom.7:21-25).”