Opinion

Dealing with phantom chains

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Dawn Cribbs

I first heard about the phantom pain phenomenon many years ago when I worked as a nurse's aide in a long-term care center.

This was back in the day when all nurse's aide training was done on the job. The only job requirement was a strong back and a tender heart. Back then, I had both. Today, not so much.

During one night shift early on in my brief employment, a gentleman rang his call light. I tiptoed in to see what he needed, apprehensive because he had only recently returned from the hospital where surgeons had removed one of his legs just below the knee. (Diabetes was taking its costly toll even way back then.)

His ailment? The missing leg ached. Not the surgical site, he explained, the leg itself.

I went to the night charge nurse and reported his complaint. She explained the phantom pain phenomenon to me, adding that there wasn't anything we could do about it, as pain relievers wouldn't be any help at all.

This confused me. She said the affliction is a "memory" pain -- the brain remembers the leg, the brain remembers the pain. Why not, I asked her, give the brain what it wanted, even if only in the form of a placebo? The brain wouldn't know. It would, I reasoned, remember the pain killer.

She declined, saying it wouldn't do any good. I went on about my business, sorry for the man and his continued suffering, still believing my idea to have been a logical solution. Phantom pain, phantom pain relief.

There are a lot of phantoms out there these days. Phantom pains and phantom chains.

Many believers, both those long in the faith or new to it, have a similar complaint. The sin nature keeps rearing its ugly head in large and small ways. It seems that those whose old life contained substance abuse or sexual sins are particularly susceptible to phantom chains. These afflictions, which the believers thought to be wholly dealt with at the foot of the cross, still plague them. Sometimes they come like bolts of lightning from the sky. More often, it is a matter of relentless harassment. The same thoughts go round and round, without end, until those tempted fall back into the same sin, over and over again.

Forgiveness is sought, over and over again. It is in our nature, however, though we are raised to "try, try again," to eventually grow weary or ashamed of approaching the Savior with our need of forgiveness for the same sin, time after time, until time out of mind. A dangerous thing happens then. We stop going to the cross. Cut off by one sin, soon we find other sins sneaking back in, other temptations flying in our faces, and since we have tasted defeat already, it goes down a little more easily each time.

Perhaps we are afflicted with phantom chains. I've encountered many phantom chains in my day. The old chains, left behind, reach out from the past to entangle and entrap again the soul who left them behind. Chains of addiction, chains of bitterness, envy, idolatry, lust. All ready to ensnare and entrap again the soul that has flown free.

The Bible teaches us that the old life, with all of its addictions and afflictions is gone, and all things are being made new in Christ. Phantom chains. Remembered sins. What is the solution?

It is always the same. Return to the cross. Return, no matter what. Return to the promises, no matter what. If you have to go 10 times a day, go 10 times. Go 50. Go 100 times. With each application of forgiveness, with each dose of God's holy word, the phantom chain weakens, it loses its imaginary substance, and it falls farther and farther behind the believer, unable to ensnare again the one who is free in Christ and therefore free indeed.