Where Things Went Wrong With Freedom
We are hearing much these days about freedom. We have the “freedom-fighters” rebelling in the Middle East. We see so many dictators taking “freedom” away from the common people.
One political approach is that people should be free in their lives to start new businesses and run their daily lives without the intrusions of government. The other political approach is that people need government control because so many are not free to live the “good” life because of poverty and disease.
To understand freedom, we must focus on the true meaning of freedom. We humans have played fast and loose with the word. We tend to regard the word as meaning a situation where we can be or do anything. Not so. Freedom is a meaningless concept unless it is freedom to choose. If there was only one thing in the world, there would be no choice, and therefore no freedom. There would not be such a word.
But freedom has as its firm base the responsibility of making intelligent choices, and right ones. Then, when we have made our choices, freedom has its limitless expression within the limiting bounds of that choice.
Repeating, freedom is LIMITLESS potential expressed within LIMITED choice. Marriage would be a human illustration. A supposedly intelligent choice is made, and then all freedom in family living is expressed within the limits of that choice. A young person chooses a profession, and then within its boundaries puts all he has into the development of the calling.
The starting point of this being the meaning of freedom is that it is stated to be true of God. We say He is unlimited. But the Bible says He is limited. Paul speaks of God who cannot lie. The writer to the Hebrews says it is impossible for God to lie. Not that He does not lie or should not, or did not, but He cannot. Therefore there is something God cannot do. What does that mean? The lie is one form of self-centeredness. It is preserving one’s own interests at the expense of another. Therefore, it is saying that God cannot be a self-seeker, self-lover, self-magnifier.
Why, if God is freedom? Because freedom means right choice and all activities as an expression of that choice; and it is here saying that from eternity that “choice” has been God’s eternal nature. He “cannot” be a self-seeker. He can only be a self-giver. Everything He has ever thought or done in His “freedom” is some form of self-giving. There is nothing else within the boundaries of His freedom.
So you see, God has given us humans freedom of choice – a necessary first step toward freedom of action within that choice. The right choice is self-giving, a choice not often seen in human history. Oh, it is seen in the rest of creation – in an involuntary way, everything has its true life, not in being itself, but in becoming others or something to others. The tree becomes the chair and table; the bread and meat become our body; water is our life. Everything is a servant, by giving up its independent life to become somebody else’s life; this is God life.
But back to us humans. Immediately there arises the dilemma of all history. If God must have free persons by whom to express Himself in freedom, then we must choose God and His boundaries of freedom! And we must be sure it is the right choice.
We cannot say that God ever made a choice in time, as we do; but we say that God, the three-in-one, always was love. But for us there is the choice. We, as created persons, could have consciously chosen to affirm that relationship and thus be natural free expressions of the free self-giving God. But equally, in freedom of choice, we can choose to be ourselves as if independent if god and live in the illusion, yet dreadful reality for us, of being independent self-loving selves.
We, in our freedom, can be united to Him in His freedom, every limitless human faculty freely expressing Him. He loves and we love. He thinks and we think, He wills and we will. He acts and we act – we humans being in essence God walking, God talking, God acting, God loving, in John’s words, “as He is, so are we in this world.” Are all humans that? Obviously, tragically not!
Then what has happened? It is not hard to see. Indeed, the Bible makes it quite plain. FREEDOM CAN BE MISUSED. It can make the wrong choice, which God the original Self, never made.
The fall of angels and humans broke open a dimension of the self-life which should never have been exposed, which never was known in God, a dimension where all that self-centeredness produces and actually becomes its way of life – pride, lust, hatred, jealousy, lying and the rest. The Bible speaks of this as “becoming as a god” for a god is an originator, and this choice of independence began this kingdom of lawless freedom which the Bible calls sin.
If, in our freedom, we choose just to live as ourselves and for ourselves, we have diverted the self to a use which never should have been in existence; but if, in our freedom, we choose our being in God, and now through the redemption and our living in union with Christ, we find a freedom in action that has limitless boundaries of self-giving love.
So, when voices yell “FREEDOM!”, we must consider what they mean – and what GOD means. The wrong choice has its own boundaries of freedom, and they ain’t good – but the right choice has GOD’s boundaries of freedom – and there ain’t nothin’ like it!
I’m going to date myself, but back in the 50’s Bing Crosby sang a song about freedom:
O give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above – Don’t fence me in!
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love – Don’t fence me in!Let me be by myself in the evening breeze,
Listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees,
Send me off forever but I ask you please,
Don’t fence me in!
Just turn me loose, let me straddle my old saddle
Underneath the western skies.
On my cayuse, let me wander over yonder til I see the mountains rise.
I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences,
And gaze at the moon til I lose my senses,
I can’t look at hovels and I can’t stand fences,
DON’T FENCE ME IN!
posted by Lou Hodapp @ 10:01 AM
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