I tend to optimize my car for my use. After all, I am typically the only in it. I close off vents so that the air blows stronger on me, I adjust the seat precisely to my standards, I leave items on the backseat for easy access, that sort of thing. I also lock my rear windows so that only I can control them from the front.
Now, there’s no reason why I’d need to do that – invisible children rarely roll down the window and try to escape while I’m driving down the highway. If anything, it’s a harmless little power trip – just a little reminder that it’s my car and my rules. Seat belts are similar, when you’re in my car, you wear a seatbelt. That’s for your own good, but it’s a power trip nonetheless.
This weekend, my parents and brother came down to visit. Since I knew the lay of the land (sort of), we drove my car everywhere. At some point my father, who was in the backseat because my “little” brother takes up 3 hectares of vertical space, requested permission to control his rear window. I granted him this, because he was nice enough to play catch with me for 10 years. I warned him, however, “You better behave back there – remember, it is a privilege, not a right.”
As is often the case, I decided it would be fun to inflate my pithy throw-away statement into a personal pet philosophy. The more I thought about it, the more I decided that a large portion of mankind is confused about what things are granted to them as a free allotment (or “by grace” would be a more theological tenable phrase), and what things are their inalienable rights. False entitlement is one of the more annoying traits that one can possess. I’d almost go so far as to say that one could do well in his life to consider nothing to be a given, and everything to be a gift.
Meanwhile, tomorrow it will become official that I will not be running for the next two months or so. My experimental run on my mangled achilles went roughly as expected – it still hurt every single step I took despite 5 days for convalescence. After braving the horrendous, oppressive heat for the last month, banking hundreds of miles while seeing a daily swing of 8-10 pounds as I shed and regained every ounce of energy in my body, I did not run this week and will continue to not run for the most pleasant two months of the year. But who says that it is my right to have that as my daily catharsis? It’s a privilege, not a right.
Words 
Egad! Random header-image comment:
“The truth shall ‘make’ you free”?
That is such historical, grammatical, literary — and unnecessary! — butchery on so many levels; I cannot believe you’re condoning it.
What sort of newfangled bible prints that sort of tripe, and what genius sat there and decided it needed to be changed from “set”?
I don’t know if that’s a subtle theological hint or not, but I doubt it. The NASB is one of the most literal Bibles in English – it doesn’t take liberties with the original language. This makes idiomatic expressions confusing, and leads to situations where common English phrases are not translated as such. The NASB avoids external influences so much that it misses the nuances of the language in translation – it tells you what the Greek says, and it’s your job as reader to understand it. There’s no pre-digestion.
Well, where would the English phrase “set [something] free” have come from, if not the bible? I feel like the phrase would be all over the bible and other ancient texts, and that that’s exactly where we got it from, verbatim.
If not, then why does NASB use the word “shall”? Why not just say “will”?
I have yet to understand why my version of the NASB is different than the one at Bible Gateway. There it says will. NIV says “set” because it updates the idiomatic language.
Here’s a comparison:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%208:31-32;&version=49;9;31;
NASB is meant to be of the form of the King James Bible – only updated with more early accurate sources and modernized somewhat. There is a difference between “will” and “shall”, just ask someone who writes technical documents all day. Apparently the writers of the NIV did not think that the difference was intended in the original text, while the original version of the NASB decided that it was best to stick to the KJV.
Incidentally, you know how the King James Version sounds archaic? We chalk it up to the fact that it’s written in 17th century English. Well, it really isn’t. The King James Bible almost CREATED the English of its era – it was almost as foreign in form and style to its contemporaries as it was to us. It was such a literary masterpiece, or at least it was so influential, that it changed the verbal environment around itself.