There's freedom and then there's FREEDOM

Reply to Graham's Post

Thanks Graham for sharing your philosophy thoughts; I was hoping this blog would be a platform for that kind of interaction among others. I want to reply to your ideas from the lens of Biblical thinking versus secular.

The World's idea of Freedom
The secular world is attempting to create a type of freedom in which they are absolutely free to pursue whatever whim, passion, or desire they may have at any moment without any interference from others, without any trouble from conscience and without even any disapproval of others. Freedom for them can be summed up as the lack of inhibition. Here is a definition of freedom from Webster's dictionary: The power to determine action without restraint. So if we can agree with the secular world that freedom is being able to determine your own actions without something restraining you from accomplishing what you determine to do, let me ask this: Who is more free to determine his own actions, the one who is constantly running after every passion that he has at every moment or the one who can put those passions aside to achieve something greater he desires? If we are constantly following our passions, then those passions become a restraint and a slave master and we are no longer free to decide what we will do with our life.

Band-Aids for cancer
Now there are ways to deal with slavery to passions apart from the gospel, as the ancients had figured out. Through discipline and training one can overcome slothfulness, laziness, overeating, cowardice, ill temper, etc, and have a sort of life that is free to pursue greater things that he desires without slavery to passions. But those disciplines only deal with it as a Band-Aid on cancer. This is how: a Buddhist priest spends every moment from the time he gets up in the morning to the moment he goes to bed at night serving an idol; bathing it, putting special food before it, cleaning its temple, praying to it, bowing to it, etc. This priest has his fleshly passions absolutely under control. He's not gorging himself; he's not running around with women, he's not a drunkard. Yet what a pathetic life, we say. He's serving something that isn't even real. But such is everyone who gets his fleshly passions under control and finds freedom only to spend every waking moment serving a god that isn't worthy: living to make money or a name for yourself, living to be remembered or become a household name, living to retire and enjoy the golf course, and living for pleasure or the weekends.

The Most Enslaving Slavery
I think that we tend to think of the first type of slavery, slavery to fleshly passions, as more enslaving than slavery to an idol that can't talk or deliver anything (pride, money, etc). We would see a prostitute or a drunkard or the people at the local gay bar as the epitome of slavery. While a self-disciplined, successful, businessman: sure he may need Jesus, but not as bad as those other people. But what is interesting about the gospels is that Jesus had some very, very hard words for people in slavery and it wasn't those drowning in their fleshly desires. We don't read about him standing on the street corner proclaiming: Woe to you, tax collectors and prostitutes, your existence is pathetic; you are steeped in sin, etc. Instead, he has very pointed, harsh words for the people who have conquered their fleshly passions, that have obtained a sort of freedom over base sin, only to spend that freedom every waking moment serving something more pathetic than a dull, lifeless, worthless, statue: human pride. The Pharisees tithed their money, they fasted twice a week, they lived upright in the eyes of the public, but they served pride and recognition and fame every waking moment. That is what they lived for. And that was what Jesus fought against the most vehemently.
So if we are going to be disgusted by the human condition and its bondage to sin, let's be the most disgusted by the kind that obtains a sort of freedom only to use it for the most pathetic ends, to replace the living God with something made of stone.

Freed Hearts
So here is my point. My point is that there is a freedom from fleshly passions in discipline. But there is only one thing worth getting up in the morning to serve, there is only one thing worth living for, there is only one thing worth spending every waking moment for. And the only real freedom in the world is when we are purged from any affection for worthless, lifeless, deceptive idols and the blinders are finally removed from our eyes that we see the One who is beautiful beyond description; only in freed hearts is there true freedom. If the loveliest treasure in the whole world were buried in my back yard, then the worst type of bondage would be for me not to be free to obtain it. That is where the secular world gets their idea of freedom. They believe that the only loveliness and beauty and goodness there is in the world is running after the pleasure of the moment. If that were true, then it would be bondage to keep them from that. They have given up their hope in something greater out there, something beyond, some treasure, some person that their hearts have been longing for all their lives. (This is where fantasy like Lewis's can play a role, in igniting the human heart to long for something higher, beyond this world; but that is another post altogether.)

Freedom Is Coming
The greatest freedom will be in heaven where we will not have the "freedom" or ability to sin. Sin is a fatal infirmity that flares up and debilitates us in varying degrees. Everyone has the disease, for some it is absolute bondage for them (they are paralyzed), for others (believers) it limits life like arthritis, but doesn't absolutely control us. In heaven we will be cured from the illness forever; the inoculation will take place when we see Him face to face. Then we will be free.