{"id":4384,"date":"2018-02-01T11:36:52","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T11:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baonline.cog7engage.net\/?p=4384"},"modified":"2023-08-29T11:22:17","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T17:22:17","slug":"of-pharaoh-and-pharmaceuticals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baonline.cog7engage.net\/of-pharaoh-and-pharmaceuticals\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Pharaoh and Pharmaceuticals"},"content":{"rendered":"
Bondage is no archaic reality; it\u2019s alive and well. This fact has been impressed on me repeatedly this week. <\/span><\/p>\n First, my daily Bible readings have taken me through the early chapters of Exodus and the last chapters of Galatians. Bondage is a key theme in both. These passages remind us that freedom is God\u2019s gift and that bondage takes many insidious forms. <\/span><\/p>\n In Exodus, bondage is Israel\u2019s long political enslavement in Egypt:<\/span><\/p>\n Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. So God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant . . . (2:23, 24).<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In Galatians, it\u2019s false religious enslavement threatening the church:<\/span><\/p>\n Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage (5:1).\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Whether it is the mighty struggle to secure liberation from bondage or that faithful resistance to keep from falling back into it, whether it\u2019s self-imposed slavery or the kind that coerces us from without, the threat of bondage is never far from any of us. And it has a way of exerting its influence over our lives, in numerous forms.<\/span><\/p>\n Another important parallel with Exodus and Galatians jumped out at me this week. While Pharaoh rejected Moses\u2019 command to let God\u2019s people go, telling Israel, \u201cGet back to your burdens\u201d (Exodus 5:4, ESV), Paul urges the Galatians to not subject themselves to slavery but to \u201cBear one another\u2019s burdens . . .\u201d (Galatians 6:2, ESV).<\/span><\/p>\n We can expect no pity from the forces of slavery that dominate this fallen world. They are merciless taskmasters who demand all and offer nothing in return. But not the church born of Christ and led by the Spirit! As the free children of God, we are a community of deliverance that does not leave each other alone with the weight and temptation of this life. We\u2019re here for one another and for those caving in under the weight of sin\u2019s enslavement. Do you see them?<\/span><\/p>\n That brings me to the second series of impressions that remind me that bondage is alive and well right now. All this week the news has revealed one story after another about America\u2019s ongoing opioid crisis. <\/span><\/p>\n The <\/span>Charleston Gazette-Mail<\/span><\/i><\/a> reports:<\/span><\/p>\n Over the past decade, out-of-state drug companies shipped 20.8 million prescription painkillers to two pharmacies four blocks apart in a Southern West Virginia town with 2,900 people, according to a congressional committee investigating the opioid crisis. . . .<\/span><\/p>\n The panel recently sent letters to regional drug wholesalers Miami-Luken and H.D. Smith, asking why the companies increased painkiller shipments and didn\u2019t flag suspicious drug orders from pharmacies while overdose deaths were surging across West Virginia. . . .<\/span><\/p>\n The state has the highest drug overdose death rate in the nation. More than 880 people fatally overdosed in West Virginia in 2016.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is just the latest article I\u2019ve run across. A piece in the <\/span>New York Times<\/span><\/i> from earlier in the week reports on the opioid crisis in New Hampshire. A more affluent state than West Virginia, with the highest median household income in the country, <\/span>New Hampshire is competing with Ohio<\/span><\/a> for the second highest drug overdose per capita deaths in the country. The government estimates that as much as <\/span>10 percent of the state<\/span><\/a> is suffering from alcohol and drug addiction. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n