Used or Abused

Lately someone informed me that ‘no one likes to be used’.  I know what he meant, but I’m not sure he got the words quite right.

We use things every day.  We use them without being consciously aware that we’re using them.  Take the clothes you’re currently wearing (of course I assume you are wearing clothes as you read this, if not I’m sure you can imagine wearing clothes, just as you can be sure I’m not imagining you reading this naked).  You are using those clothes.  You will use the food you consume.  You are using the air around to help sustain you.  You are always using something –  your brain, your other faculties, etc.

There is no problems with using those.

So what my friend meant was that no likes to be abused.  Yet I know the very mention of the word abuse can evoke images of extreme and graphic cases of abuse whether verbal or physical.  Undoubtedly abuse includes those depictions.  Yet if we leave it at that we won’t fully appreciate what abuse is and how many people are abused every single day.

Consider the nature of some relationships where it is based on one person being manipulated for the purposes of another.  The relationship on the surface appears perfectly fine.  Jill and Sarah appear to get on really well with each other.  Underneath appearances people do not realise that Sarah has taken advantage of Jill’s low self-worth to get a sense of superiority through subtle things.  It is almost as though she patronises her by allowing her to go for social occasions with her and bask in the radianace of her wit and whenever Sarah is short of cash she knows Jill will be too happy to give, even if she would suffer greater loss.

Now you may scratch your head and wonder who would ever let themselves fal into that kind of relationship, and my answer would be quite a large number of vulnerable people who are caught in the area of their weakness.  There is surface evidence of great care being given, but beneath that it is really subtle coercion and devious manipulation.

That doesn’t just happen on the personal scale.  In corporate and communal settings organisations, teams, groups and families are suckered into a status quo that does not make the best use of each member, but actually abuses them.  Such is the bait and switch tactic of this institutional abuse that some people do not know it, until they leave it and realise what they have been through.

It is a most sobering and saddening event to have that realisation of being abused.  It should be similar feeling to recognising what it was to be a slave to sin.  Recognising how much of you was distorted because of sin and how much of your life’s essence was completely drained from you because of sin should still send shivers down the spine.

Thank God, however, that Jesus wakes us up from this nightmare scenario and allows the light of His love to shine on the path to being liberated.  That liberation stops the abuse.  It doesn’t stop the use.  Indeed it starts the full use to its full potential of all that we are and ever could be.

When we have the eyes to see, He shows us how much we are abusing, and how much we have been abused and how we can stop it so we can truly be good stewards.  Stewards are known for the good use of their resources.  Every human being has a resource that they manage – they manage themselves (mind, body, mouth), they manage time and they manage relationships.  How we use or abuse that determines how we expereince the true liberation in Christ.  When we abuse that we are reminded again of the captivity of sin, but also of the hope we have in Jesus to walk away from that captivity with renewed minds, clean hands and pure hearts to carry out our own lives fully used and  not abused.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd