The Jailer and The Prisoner Are In The Same Cell

0:02 Last episode, I said love keeps no record of wrongs doesn't have a footnote. This episode, we're going to go a step further. Several years ago, about twenty five years ago, to be exact, I was in a Bible study and the passage that was being studied was John chapter one. Now, this was at the beginning of my on learning journey, or towards the beginning. There are several things about that particular study that I found to be deeply profound. I actually still have the notes from that study. One of the things that stuck with me the most over the years the speaker said something, and it was this is me or may not be verbatim, but it went something like this.

1:30 Everyone says they want to be free, but not if it means the person in the cell next to them also gets to be free. Think about that.

2:01 I've used a lot of different metaphors analogies over the course of this podcast. So far. We talked about the wagon wheel, We've talked about the dream, We've talked about the menu, We've talked about the courtroom. We've talked about the banking system. Last week we used ledgers and transactions and currency. This episode is about the prison. After the verdict is handed down, usually in most cases, in most relationships, in anything where I am using hurt as currency, the verdict was guilty. Well, what happens next after the guilty verdict?

3:13 The defendant has to serve their sentence. They need to go to jail. They need to go to prison literally or figuratively. Let's think about the prison for a second. Well, it's more than a second. Who's in the prison. Well, obviously in a prison you have inmates, the people who were deemed guilty, the verdict that was issued, and then the sentence was handed down. I have jailers or guards, if you want to call them that. There's all sorts of ancillary staff, medical staff, maintenance crews, cafeteria.

4:27 Some of those jobs are handled by the inmates themselves, but a lot of them are not. There are other people who are choosing to go to work there. Then there's the warden, who's kind of in charge of the whole place. When I decide someone is guilty, when I forgot what love is,

5:06 what is it that I feel like I need to experience in that moment when I decide that what you did to me deserves punishment? The best word to describe that is control. I lost control of myself. Now I'm going to place you in prison. You may not even know it. You may know it, but you may not.

6:05 Maybe you didn't return my call. Maybe it's an unforgiven word,

6:15 or maybe it's maintaining distance in a relationship. Maybe the boundary that I set was based on hurt as currency.

6:40 When I want to be free, I don't want you to be freed as well. You deserved the sentence that you got. You're in prison for a reason. The interesting thing about that thought process is if I don't understand until I think about it, that I'm in prison too. Every group of people or person that I mentioned, the inmates, the guards or jailers, the warden, the medical staff, the maintenance crews, the cafeteria staff, they're all in prison together.

7:47 They're just not all looking at it the same way. What's more interesting is the inmates don't get to go home and come back the next day. They are not choosing to stay in prison. And I'm not talking about the choice that they made that put them there, which may or may not have been real. Everyone besides the inmates is choosing to go back to the prison. They're all in the prison together. Some people would use the prison analogy as proof of separation. I think it's the opposite of that. I think it shows It more shows proof of oneness than it does separate.

9:02 We're all in prison together. When we keep a record, when we decide that's what someone did to us, or what someone did to someone else deserves punishment, we are all in it together. Every single one of us is in prison. Sometimes that prison is just actually I shouldn't say sometimes, most most of the time, that prison is just us because, especially if the other person who wronged us didn't text when we thought they should, didn't call when they thought when I thought they should, or maybe they texted when I thought they should have called, they said an unkind word that they didn't mean as unkind.

10:34 It was how I decided to interpret what they said, and that could be based on things that happened before. But there again, that's me keeping a record. What I don't think of is the key is on the inside. The key to get out is on the inside, not the outside. It's inside the prison. I hold the key. I hold the key for my freedom. Stand fast therefore in the liberty with which Christ has made you free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. But what about the person who hurt me? That's me deciding to stay in a yoke of bondage.

12:01 The yoke implies two. Everybody says they want to be free, but not if it means the person in the cell next to them gets to be free as well. Sit with this. It's not supposed to feel comfortable next time. The courtroom was never in the text.