Nothing Left To Lose

Written by Matt Mosler
Tuesday, 12 August 2008

In the 1991 movie, The Doctor, William Hurt plays a cancer doctor with an enormous ego and a horrible bedside manner. Then he gets cancer. His treatment by other doctors just like him eventually changes the way he does business. But his relationship with another patient changes the way he does life. 

Her name in the movie was June, played by Elizabeth McGovern. She was a young lady suffering from an inoperable brain tumor. And at one point in the movie when William Hurt’s character was being particularly arrogant she responds in the strongest of terms then apologizes by saying, “My tumor, I see it giving me certain freedoms I never allowed myself.” 

By knowing she was terminal June didn’t waste a lot of time playing games. She wasn’t worried about status or money or popularity. She was free to say what she thought and do what she felt.  After all she had nothing left to lose. In his song, Me and Bobby McGee, Kris Kristofferson wrote, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” The blind man in John chapter 9 had nothing to lose when he met Jesus and freedom is exactly what he received in return. 

If you’ll recall the man had been blind since birth and as such was reduced to a life of begging.  As a beggar he couldn’t be a part of the synagogue. And back then if you weren’t a member of the synagogue in good standing not only were you ostracized from the community but you were blackballed both economically and politically. Basically without the Pharisees stamp of approval you were persona non grata…or what the blind man had been his whole life. 

So when Jesus drops by one day and heals him there was nothing or nobody who was going to restrain this man’s joy. Because he had nothing to lose there was nothing to temper his boldness in telling anyone who would listen that Jesus had healed him…including the Pharisees! Listen to what he tells them when they accuse Jesus of being a sinner, “’Whether he is a sinner I do not know; one thing I do know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.’ They said therefore to him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’ He answered them, ‘I told you already and you did not listen; why do you want to hear it again? You do not want to become his disciples too, do you?’”   (25-27)

Don’t you love that!  Don’t you wish you had that kind of boldness to “proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light?” (I Pet. 2:9) Unfortunately too many of us are like the blind man’s parents who when put under pressure by the Pharisees totally threw the boy under the bus, “We know that this is our son,” they said, “and that he was born blind; but how he now sees we do not know; or who opened his eyes we do not know. Ask him; he is of age, he shall speak for himself.” (20-21) In other words, “Dude, you’re on your own. We need the synagogue too much.”

Those parents had too much to lose to even support their own son let alone bring praise and honor to Jesus. What about us? How often do we refer to worldly items as blessings when in reality they’re holding us in bondage? How often have we been unable or unwilling to follow the desire God’s placed in our hearts because we’re afraid it will cost us too much money, power or popularity?

Jesus told the Jews who were risking much to follow him that if they continued to abide in his word they would “know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” (Jn. 8:32) Free to do what?  Free to follow without fear because they would come to believe that nothing the world has to offer compares to the life God had created for them. (Phil. 3:8-14)

The blind man had nothing to lose and Christ totally turned his life around. What are you hanging on to that’s preventing Him from doing the same to you?