Selling Myself

Ahab said to Elijah, “Have you found me, O my enemy?” He answered, “I have found you, because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the LORD.” 1 Kings 21:20

Often, in my line of work, I’ll meet patients who’re consuming large amounts of an expensive drug daily. In exploring what the drug has cost them (monetarily and otherwise), I’ll often ask how they can afford such a lifestyle. I’d have difficulty paying for some of these habits, and I’m a physician. The description of their sources of income is often as sad as the addiction itself. Some of my patients have burned bridges with everyone they know by  borrowing money that will never be paid back. Others have engaged in criminal activity – such as selling drugs – to afford their habit. Some have simply turned to robbery, stealing whatever they can, to purchase the drug. The saddest by far though, are those patients who, trapped in an addiction that’s destroying their lives, have resorted to selling the only thing they had left – themselves. They’d never considered themselves prostitutes and they never set out to exchange sex for money or drugs, but when they needed the drug like they needed oxygen, and when they had no other source of income, there have always been those who were willing to take advantage, giving the desperate what they need, in exchange for sex.

This selling of oneself is the accusation presented in today’s passage, which tells of the confrontation between the prophet Elijah and King Ahab. In the story, King Ahab and his wife conspired to have an innocent man killed so Ahab could take his vineyard. Once the deed was done and Ahab acquired the vineyard, God sent Elijah to condemn Ahab for his sin, telling him that he’d sold himself to evil. The Hebrew word, makar, means to betray or to sell  someone into slavery. In this case, to get what he wanted (the vineyard), Ahab sold himself, enslaving his own soul to evil. Ahab may have thought he’d won and was the one wielding power, but in fact, he had made himself a slave, ruled and overthrown by his own sin.

In my addiction, I may not have sold my physical body, but as I gradually exchanged more and more of myself for the drug, the drug came to control me. I thought freedom was the ability to do whatever I wanted, but I discovered that in pursuing my appetite above all, I enslaved myself to it. Soon, it wasn’t me making the decisions, but the drug. You’ll not be surprised to know that the drug makes terrible decisions. Recovery then, has been the process of taking back my life. Paradoxically, it is only in surrendering my will to God, following him instead of me, that I find true freedom. As I once sold myself to sin, I now offer my life to God, who will never enslave me.