Entangled - Part 1 of 2 on 2 Timothy 2:3-4

I read 2 Timothy 2:3-4 this morning, and verse four is the one that stuck with me: "No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him." The word entangled is what got me, because I could name exactly which affairs of everyday life had been entangling me lately, and none of them looked like much on their own, which is exactly how they slip under my radar and entangle me without me even realizing it is happening.

What entanglement actually looks like for me

I used to picture worldly entanglement as something with a little more weight to it, a scandal, an addiction, or a visible collapse, but for me, most weeks, it shows up as comparison, and comparison is the thief of joy, it lives in my head robbing me of joy and gratitude long before I ever notice it is there, and I believe the enemy uses it for exactly that, to steal contentment I already have and replace it with wanting what I do not.

I compare my marriage with Maddy against marriages I only ever see the highlight reel of, and I walk away feeling worse about something that is genuinely good, over nothing more than someone else's edited version looking easier than my real one.

I drove my brother's Tesla Model 3 for a month, and by week two I was already building the case for a car payment, because I liked how it felt and how it looked. My CRV has over 150,000 miles on it, is paid off, and has never once left me stranded, and none of that mattered once I had something nicer sitting in my driveway for a month.

I rent from my grandma Cyndi at a fair rate, the house is safe, it serves my family well, and it is genuinely a good situation, yet I still catch myself looking at other people's houses and deciding I need to move, without ever asking what that house is actually costing them.

And in the one area I would least expect it, I compare my knowledge of Scripture against people who have been walking with God for decades. I feel embarrassed when I do not know a name or a story or where a verse comes from, as if a year into this walk should look identical to someone twenty years in, when the truer measure is how much the Word has actually changed me, which is a lot.

The math I never see

None of those comparisons are really about the car or the house or the verse I could not place, they are about measuring my whole life, the parts I know are true because I live them every day, against someone else's surface, the parts they chose to show.

The people I compare myself to are very likely carrying a car payment on that nicer car, or a bigger mortgage on that bigger house, or working a second job to keep it all standing, or drowning in debt, or drowning in the stress of maintaining everything they have, because bigger things bring bigger problems, but I never see any of that, so I never weigh it, I just see the result and assume it came free.

Proverbs puts words to why this matters more than it looks like it does: the borrower ends up the slave of the lender, and I know this one from the inside. Shortly after I moved out and started living on my own, Maddy and I ran up a few thousand dollars of credit card debt just living slightly past what we made, and it took the better part of a year and selling most of what we owned to get free of it, which is its own story for another post. What I will say here is that debt did not feel like slavery on the way in, it felt like slavery about six months later, and by then the bill was already due.

Whose approval I am actually after

A soldier does not measure his gear against the soldier next to him, and he is not trying to impress the civilians watching from the sidelines. Paul is specific about why the entanglement matters: so that he may please the one who enlisted him, not the other soldiers, nor the crowd, but one person, and the whole aim of staying free from entanglement is pleasing him.

Every comparison I named above has the same defect, it measures me sideways, against a person, instead of measuring me against the one thing that actually matters, which is whether I am living the way God has called me to live. A new car does not help me serve God better, a bigger house does not help me serve God better, and knowing more names and stories does not help me serve God better if none of it changes how I actually live. That is different, obviously, if the car does not run or the house is not safe, but that is not the situation for me, and it is probably not the situation for most of you reading this either. The one who enlisted me decided how He sees me a long time ago, and a better car, a bigger house, or more Bible trivia does not add to that or take anything from it, which means every comparison I keep running is a fight over an approval that was never actually up for grabs.

Where I actually am with this

It still shows up almost every week, in a scroll, in a driveway, or in a conversation about the Word where I feel a step behind, and the one thing I have found that helps, even if it does not kill the pull outright, is asking myself in the moment what this is actually costing the person who has it, and what it would cost me to want it, which slows things down enough for me to remember who I am actually trying to please, and most days that is enough to put the car, the house, and the comparison back down.

What are you entangled in right now. Not what you would guess if a stranger asked you, but what has actually been sitting quietly in your head this week, taking up attention that belongs to the one who enlisted you.

If something already came to mind while you were reading this, do not let it stay quiet where it can keep working on you unnoticed. Write it down, say it out loud to your spouse or a friend who will not let you off easy, and ask God plainly to help you want Him more than you want whatever that thing is dangling in front of you. Naming it will not make the pull disappear, but it puts it in the light, and that is where it loses most of its power over you.

That is the outward version of getting entangled, the version where my eyes wander toward what someone else has, and the harder one for me, the one about where my mind goes even when my body is standing exactly where it should be, is next.