Article July 7, 1980 Issue

Burning mental bonds

ADRIAN DeWINDT

Nobody need feel bound to a sick body, a dead-end career, unhappiness. Whatever the trouble, the Bible can guide you to freedom. Many find their own lives paralleled in the Bible.

Consider the story in the book of Daniel that relates the predicament of three young Hebrews condemned to death in "a burning fiery furnace" by a Babylonian king. Prior to being cast into the furnace, the three men were tied, helpless as logs, to be thrown on the fire. But when the king looked into the furnace, he saw them walking unbound and unhurt, accompanied by a fourth, "like the Son of God." Apparently, the only result of this fiery trial was to free the Hebrews of their bonds and to make the presence of the Christ visible to the king. They emerged unharmed and without even the smell of smoke.^{See Dan. 3;}

Don't we all have fiery trials sometimes? The furnace effect we can expect as we turn to God to overcome a trial is not pain and trouble but the burning away of self-imposed mental bonds. Of course, the power that eliminates bondage is God's, not the trial itself. Bonds—limitations of every kind—are forged by our acceptance of a mortal reality opposed to God's ever-present perfection. As we understand perfection to be our present state, our bonds disappear, and the Christ—the spiritual idea of sonship with God—becomes apparent.

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