Authentic freedom
One of the best ways of sharing the gospel today is to present it in terms of freedom. At least three arguments may be used.
First, freedom is an extremely appealing topic. There is a widespread distrust of authority, tradition and institutions in our culture, seen as synonymous with a worldwide quest for freedom. Many people are obsessed with it, and are spending their lives in pursuit of it. For some it is national freedom, emancipation from external rule. For others it is civil rights, as they protest against ethnic, sexual or gender discrimination. Yet others are preoccupied with the search for economic freedom, freedom from hunger, poverty and unemployment. At the same time, all of us are concerned for our personal freedom. Even those who campaign most vigorously for the other freedoms I have mentioned (national, civil and economic) often know that they are not liberated people themselves. They cannot always put a name to the tyrannies that oppress them. Yet they feel frustrated, unfulfilled and unfree.
John Fowles, the writer of The French Lieutenant’s Woman which was made into a film starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons, was once asked in an interview, ‘Is there a particular picture of the world that you would like to develop in your writing? Something that has remained important to you?’ ‘Freedom, yes,’ John Fowles replied, ‘how you achieve freedom. That obsesses me. All my books are about that.’
Second, ‘freedom’ is a great Christian word. Jesus Christ is portrayed in the New Testament as the world’s supreme liberator. ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me,’ he claimed, applying an Old Testament prophecy to himself, ‘because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ Whether Jesus intended the poor, the prisoners, the blind and the oppressed to be understood as material or spiritual categories or both (the question continues to be hotly debated), the good news he proclaimed to them was certainly ‘freedom’ or ‘release’. Later in his public ministry he added the promise: ‘If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.’ Then the apostle Paul became the champion of Christian liberty and wrote, ‘It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.’ For those who find ‘salvation’ a bit of meaningless religious jargon, and even an embarrassment, ‘freedom’ is an excellent substitute. To be saved by Jesus Christ is to be set free.
Third, freedom is much misunderstood. Even those who talk loudest and longest about freedom have not always paused first to define what they are talking about. A notable example is the Marxist orator who was waxing eloquent on the street corner about the freedom we would all enjoy after the revolution. ‘When we get freedom,’ he cried, ‘you’ll all be able to smoke cigars like that’, pointing at an opulent gentleman walking by.
‘I prefer my cigarette,’ shouted a heckler.
‘When we get freedom,’ the Marxist continued, ignoring the interruption and warming to his theme, ‘you’ll all be able to drive in cars like that’, pointing to a sumptuous Mercedes that was driving by.
‘I prefer my bike,’ shouted the heckler.
And so the dialogue continued, until the Marxist could bear his tormentor no longer. Turning on him, he said, ‘When we get freedom, you’ll do what you’re told.’
The negative: freedom from
So what is freedom? A true definition is bound to begin negatively. We have to identify the forces that tyrannize us and so inhibit our freedom. Only then can we grasp how Christ is able to liberate us.
First, Jesus Christ offers us freedom from guilt. We should be thankful for the reaction against Freud’s insistence that feelings of guilt are pathological, symptoms of mental sickness. Some doubtless are, especially in certain kinds of depression, but not all guilt is false guilt. On the contrary, an increasing number of contemporary psychologists and psychotherapists, even if they are not Christians, are telling us that we must take our responsibilities seriously. The late Dr Hobart Mowrer of the University of Illinois, for example, understood human life in contractual terms and saw ‘sin’ as a breach of contract for which restitution must be made. Certainly, the Bible has always emphasized both our obligations as human beings and our failure to meet them. In particular, we have asserted ourselves against the love and authority of God, and against the welfare of our neighbours. To use straightforward Christian language, we are not only sinners, but guilty sinners, and our conscience confirms this. According to one of Mark Twain’s witticisms, ‘Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.’
No-one is free who is unforgiven. If I were not sure of God’s mercy and forgiveness, I could not look you in the face, or (more importantly) God. I would want to run away and hide, as Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden. The ‘cover-up’ did not start with contemporary politicians, but in Eden. I would certainly not be free. Not long before she died, in a moment of surprising candour on television, Marghanita Laski, well-known secular humanist and novelist, said, ‘What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness; I have nobody to forgive me.’
‘But,’ as Christians want to shout from the housetops, echoing the psalmist, ‘there is forgiveness with God.’ For in his love for sinners like us, God entered our world in the person of his Son. Having lived a life of perfect righteousness, he identified himself in his death with our unrighteousness. He bore our sin, our guilt, our death in our place, in order that we might be forgiven.
So freedom begins with forgiveness. I remember a university student who had been brought up in spiritism who was taken to a Christian meeting where he heard the gospel. The following weekend the battle for his soul began in earnest, until (as he wrote later) he cried in despair to Jesus Christ to save him. Then, he said, ‘he really came to me. I felt actual, real love. I can’t describe it. It was just pure beauty and serenity. And despite the fact that I knew nothing about salvation and sin, and did not even know what they meant, I just knew I was forgiven . . . I was unbelievably happy.’
Second, Jesus Christ offers us freedom from ourselves. Talking once with some Jewish believers, he said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ They were indignant. How dare he say that they needed to be liberated? ‘We are Abraham’s descendants,’ they cried, ‘and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?’
Jesus replied, ‘Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.’
So, if guilt is the first slavery from which we need to be freed, sin is the second. What does that mean? Like ‘salvation’, ‘sin’ is a word that belongs to the traditional vocabulary of Christians. ‘I am not a sinner,’ people often say, because they seem to associate sin with specific and rather sensational misdeeds like murder, adultery and theft. But ‘sin’ has a much wider connotation than that. I can remember what a revelation it was to me to learn that what the Bible means by ‘sin’ is primarily self-centredness. For God’s two great commandments are first, that we love him with all our being, and second, that we love our neighbour as we love ourselves. Sin, then, is the reversal of this order. It is to put ourselves first, proclaiming our own autonomy. We put our neighbour next when it suits our convenience, and God somewhere in the background.
The fact that self-centredness is common to all human experience is clear from the rich variety of words in our language which are compounded with ‘self’. There are more than fifty that have a pejorative meaning – words like self-applause, self-absorption, self-assertion, self-advertisement, self-indulgence, self-gratification, self-glorification, self-pity, self-importance, self-interest and self-will.
Our self-centredness is a terrible tyranny. Malcolm Muggeridge used to speak of ‘the dark little dungeon of my own ego’. And what a dark dungeon it is! To be engrossed in our own selfish concerns and ambitions, without regard either for the glory of God or for the good of others, is to be confined in the most cramped and unhealthy of prisons.
Yet Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead and is alive, can liberate us. It is possible for us to know ‘the power of his resurrection’. Or, to put the same truth in different words, the living Jesus can enter our personality by his Spirit and turn us inside out. Not of course that Christians claim to be perfect, but by the power of his indwelling Spirit we have at least begun to experience a transformation from self to un-self. Our previously closed personality is starting to unfold to Christ, like a flower opening to the warmth of the sun.
Third, Jesus Christ offers us freedom from fear. The ancient world into which he came lived in dread of the powers which, it was believed, inhabited the stars. Still today, adherents of traditional religion are haunted by malevolent spirits that need to be placated. Lives of modern people are also overshadowed by fear. There are the common fears that have always plagued human beings – the fear of sickness, bereavement, old age and death, together with the fear of the unknown, the occult and environmental disaster. Most of us have also sometimes suffered from irrational fears. It is extraordinary how many educated people entertain superstitious fears. They touch wood, cross their fingers, carry charms and avoid the number thirteen, believing it to be unlucky. Many high-rise hotels in the United States have no thirteenth floor. As you go up in the elevator, the numbers jump from 12 to 14. People are too superstitious to sleep on the thirteenth floor, without realizing that it is still the thirteenth even if you call it the fourteenth! In Britain there are more adults who read their horoscope each week than read their Bible.
All fear brings a measure of paralysis. Nobody who is afraid is free. Moreover, fear is like fungus: it grows most rapidly in the dark. It is essential, therefore, to bring our fears out into the light and look at them, especially in the light of the victory and supremacy of Jesus Christ. For he who died and rose has also been exalted to his Father’s right hand, and everything has been put ‘under his feet’. So where are the things of which we were previously afraid? They are under the feet of the triumphant Christ. It is when we see them there that their power to terrify is broken.
That fear and freedom are mutually incompatible was illustrated for me once by a young African lecturer. We had been discussing the need for Christians to take a greater interest in natural history as God’s creation. ‘Before I became a Christian,’ he responded, ‘I was afraid of many things, especially snakes. But now I find it hard to kill one because I enjoy watching them. I thank God that now I am really free.’
The positive: freedom for
So far we have connected the tyrannies that impede our freedom to the three major events in the experience of Jesus Christ: his death, resurrection and exaltation. There is freedom from guilt because he died for us, freedom from self because we may live in the power of his resurrection, and freedom from fear because he reigns, with all things under his feet.
It is a serious error, however, to define freedom in entirely negative terms, even if dictionaries make this mistake. According to one, freedom is ‘the absence of hindrance, restraint, confinement, repression’, while according to another, to be free is to be ‘not enslaved, not imprisoned, unrestricted, unrestrained, unhampered’. Every negative, however, has its positive counterpart. The true cry for freedom is not only for rescue from some tyranny, but also for liberty to live a full and meaningful life. Once a country has been delivered from a dictatorship, it is free to develop a new national identity. Once the press is delivered from governmental control and censorship, it is free to publish the truth. Once a minority is delivered from discrimination, it is free to enjoy self-respect and dignity. For it is nationhood which is denied when a country is not free, truth when the press is not free and self-respect when a minority is not free.
What, then, is the positive freedom of human beings? Michael Ramsey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, once preached a series of four sermons, which were published under the title Freedom, Faith and the Future. In the first he posed the question: ‘We know what we want to free men from. Do we know what we want to free men for?’ He went on to answer his own question. Our striving for those freedoms ‘which most palpably stir our feelings’ (e.g. freedom from persecution, arbitrary imprisonment, crippling hunger and poverty) should always be ‘in the context of the more radical and revolutionary issue of the freeing of man from self and for the glory of God’.
It is this question of what we are set free for by Christ that we need to pursue. The principle is this: true freedom is freedom to be our true selves, as God made us and meant us to be. How can this principle be applied?
We must begin with God himself. Have you ever considered that God is the only being who enjoys perfect freedom? You could argue that he is not free. For his freedom is certainly not absolute in the sense that he can do absolutely anything. Scripture itself tells us that he cannot lie, tempt or be tempted, or tolerate evil. Nevertheless, God’s freedom is perfect in the sense that he is free to do absolutely anything that he wills to do. God’s freedom is freedom to be always entirely himself. There is nothing arbitrary, moody, capricious or unpredictable about him. He is constant, steadfast, unchanging. In fact, the main thing Scripture says he ‘cannot’ do (cannot because he will not) is contradict himself. ‘He cannot deny himself.’ To do this would not be freedom, but self-destruction. God finds his freedom in being himself, his true self.
What is true of God the Creator is also true of all created things and beings. Absolute freedom, freedom unlimited, is an illusion. If it is impossible for God (which it is), it is most certainly impossible for God’s creation. God’s freedom is freedom to be himself; our freedom is freedom to be ourselves. The freedom of every creature is limited by the nature which God has given it.
Take fish. God created fish to live and thrive in water. Their gills are adapted to absorb oxygen from water. Water is the only element in which a fish can find its ‘fishiness’, its identity as a fish, its fulfilment, its freedom. True, it is limited to water, but in that limitation is liberty. Supposing you keep a tropical fish at home. It lives not in a modern, rectangular, aerated tank, but in one of those old-fashioned, Victorian, spherical goldfish bowls. And supposing your fish swims round and round its bowl until it finds its frustration unbearable. So it decides to make a bid for freedom and leaps out of its confinement. If somehow it manages to leap into a pond in your garden, it will increase its freedom. It is still in water, but there is more water to swim in. If instead it lands on the carpet, then its attempt to escape spells not freedom, but death.
What, then, about human beings? If fish were made for water, what are human beings made for? I think we have to answer that if water is the element in which fish find their fishiness, then the element in which humans find their humanness is love, the relationships of love. Morris West gives a striking example of this in his book Children of the Sun, which tells the story of the scugnizzi, the abandoned street children of Naples, and of Father Mario Borelli’s love for them. ‘There is one thing about us (that is Neapolitans),’ Mario said to Morris, ‘that never changes. We have need of love as a fish has need of water, as a bird has need of air.’ He went on to explain that every single one of the scugnizzi he knew ‘had left home because there was no longer any love for him’.
But it is not just the world’s street children who need to love and to be loved, and who discover that life spells love. It is all of us. It is in love that we find and fulfil ourselves. The reason for this is not hard to find. It is that God is love in his essential being, so that when he made us in his own image, he gave us a capacity to love as he loves. It is not a random thing, therefore, that God’s two great commandments are to love him and each other, for this is our destiny. A truly human existence is impossible without love. Living is loving, and without love we wither and die. As Robert Southwell, the sixteenth-century Roman Catholic poet, expressed it: ‘Not when I breathe, but when I love, I live.’ He was probably echoing Augustine’s remark that the soul lives where it loves, not where it exists.
True love, however, places constraints on the lover, for love is essentially self-giving. And this brings us to a startling Christian paradox. True freedom is freedom to be my true self, as God made me and meant me to be. And God made me for loving. But loving is giving, self-giving. Therefore, in order to be myself, I have to deny myself and give myself. In order to be free, I have to serve. In order to live, I have to die to my own self-centredness. In order to find myself, I have to lose myself in loving.
True freedom is, then, the exact opposite of what many people think. It is not being free from responsibility to God and others so I can live for myself. That is bondage to my own self-centredness. Instead, true freedom is freedom from my silly little self so I can live responsibly in love for God and others.
Yet the secular mind cannot come to terms with this Christian paradox of freedom through love. For example, Françoise Sagan, the French novelist, once told an interviewer she was perfectly satisfied with her life and had no regrets.
‘You have had the freedom you wanted?’
‘Yes.’ Then she qualified her statement. ‘I was obviously less free when I was in love with someone . . . But one’s not in love all the time. Apart from that . . . I’m free.’
The implication was clear: love inhibits liberty. The more you love, the less free you are, and vice versa. Presumably, therefore, the way to be completely free is to avoid all the entanglements of love, indeed to give up loving altogether.
But Jesus taught the opposite in one of his favourite sayings, one that he seems to have quoted in different forms and contexts. He said, ‘For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.’ I used to imagine that Jesus was referring to martyrs who lay down their life for him. And the principle he is enunciating certainly includes them. But the ‘life’ he is talking about, which can be either saved or lost, is not our physical existence (zōē), but our soul or self (psychē). It is a word that is often used instead of the reflexive ‘himself’ or ‘herself’. One could, then, perhaps paraphrase Jesus’ words like this: ‘If you insist on holding on to yourself, and on living for yourself, and refuse to let yourself go, you will lose yourself. But if you are willing to give yourself away in love, then, at the moment of complete abandonment, when you imagine that everything is lost, the miracle takes place and you find yourself and your freedom.’ It is only sacrificial service, the giving of the self in love to God and others, which is perfect freedom.
Authentic freedom, then, combines the negative (freedom from) with the positive (freedom for). Or, to put it another way, it brings together freedom from tyranny and freedom under authority. Jesus illustrated this in one of his best-known invitations:
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
There are actually two invitations here with a single promise. The promise is ‘rest’, which seems to include the notion of freedom. ‘I will give you rest,’ says Jesus. ‘You will find rest for your souls.’ But to whom does he promise rest? He gives it first to those who come to him ‘weary and burdened’, for he lifts their burdens and sets them free. Second, he gives it to those who take his yoke upon them and learn from him. Thus, true rest is found in Jesus Christ our Saviour, who frees us from the tyranny of guilt, self and fear, and in Jesus Christ our Lord, when we submit to the authority of his teaching. For his yoke is easy, his burden is light, and he himself is ‘gentle and humble in heart’.