Freedom: The Full Use of One’s Faculties, Powers and Potential

Freedom is the refusal to be anything less than what one wholly (holy) is. This is a radical essay, in that I question the foundations of most conceptions of normalcy today. Here, you will see questioned wearing a seatbelt, staying within the painted lines on a highway and the value of an institutional education (to do anything other than see through the institution). Please enter this essay, as you would the top of a cliff over a vast vista, with trees and animals in the distance, waterfalls nearby and birds flying past you into the expanse.

The central question of human development to now has been the urge to freedom. The desire to remove the external boundaries, to remove the internal boundaries, has been the motivation of much of human thought, from primordial times to the early 3rd millennium Anno Domini. The writings of early philosophers in the West centered upon the individual knowing the ecstatic and static working of the inner and outer reality. From the Pythagorean ontology of geometric objects to the arche of water by Thales, from the Eleusinian mysteries to the journey of Parmenides to the underworld to retrieve logic, early philosophers were as much spiritualists as philosophers, as much magicians as natural scientists.

The early form of knowledge developed here was a form of knowledge-how, i.e., beginning an understanding of reality on its terms to better operate within it. This knowledge, based in understanding the universe, helps most when it helps the user. Knowledge, then, or rather knowing, is liberatory, freeing oneself from the internal and external chains of illusion that prevent us from engaging with reality in the greatest power and potential.

This exercise is strange when examined in contrast to Jewish tradition. To the Jews, God alone deserved contemplation and praise, worship and fear. Reality, merely, is His creation. The Jews petitioned, prayed and pleased their God, and He helps, saves and protects them. A fundamental difference in approach: the Greeks and others sought knowledge of the natural and supernatural world–the Jews sought God. We can see now the impacts of these beliefs. Greek philosophy has relegated itself to the corners of universities, especially any Greek philosophy that seeks to understand the writings in their own times and places, their own fealties and traditions. The growths of Jewish faith led to Christianity, the single greatest religion in the world, helping over two billion people live and die in righteousness.

By effect size, then, we can imagine Jacob Cohen’s d comparing the populations helped by Christianity and Jewish faith to those helped by Greek philosophy as significantly larger. According to utilitarianism, the sine qua non of our industrial society, then Christianity and Jewish faith is better.

The main distinction between these belief systems is that Greek philosophy makes the world in man’s image, while Christianity and Jewish faith makes the world in God’s image. The tradition of philosophy is large and deep, with not all of its aspects leading to subjectivity and relativism, but with the lack of any important reason to not be subjectivist or relativist (i.e., the love and fear of God), philosophy becomes a humanist endeavor. Unfortunately, just like a child without parents, humans without an authority do not behave in the world with the reverence and faithfulness we are each called to.

In the Garden, man was made in the image of God. This placed each of us on a pedestal of reverence and respect, regardless of our lack of a willingness to become who we are. Because of the Fall, the legged snake convincing Eve to eat, and so Adam, we have lost the birthright of being in union with God naturally. Rather than destroying everything immediately and starting over, God decided to let man work out his salvation with fear and trembling. Since then, history, has been bloody and brutal, worthy of the quote from Dedalus in James Joyce’s Ulysses, that “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

Genesis is a monumental book with figures worthy of the beginning of Creation. It is significant that neither Noah nor Abraham, Isaac or Jacob had writings to follow about God, at least that we know. Why, then, did God favor these men? Noah feared and loved Him. Abraham obeyed Him. Isaac obeyed Him. Jacob feared and loved Him. The Fathers of our tradition, rather than obeying a series of rules or laws, lived in companionship with God. Their relationship with Him was not mediated by tablets or dictated by symbols but flourished with the alignment of their hearts with His will.

The faithfulness cultivated by the early Fathers to God was rewarded well. Unfortunately, the connection to Him became strained with the passage of time and place. The enslavement of the Jews became a sincere block to the promises and relationship that God promised the descendants of Abraham. Moses, a murderer, became used by God to lead His people out of slavery.

The success of His works here were talked about and known among the Egyptians and neighboring nations, but the Jews still had difficulty walking with God. They needed more of a structure. So, God wrote the Law, using Moses to deliver His commands.

Though they had the pathway to salvation, the Law became a roadblock. Rather than being the guidelines to relationship with God, the Israelites began to replace relationship with God with the Law. This led to the Prophets, on behalf of God, saying, “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6). God desires to walk along with us like He did Adam and Eve. The relationship He had with Abraham was good, but it was still a fallen relationship. His Creation became so corrupt that it was irredeemable on the terms of the fallen world, even through the revealed Word of God.

In steps Jesus, immaculately formed in the womb of a young girl named Mary marrying a man in the line of David. From the line of a king, what the Israelites had been warned about by God and Samuel to not have, the Messiah was promised (1 Samuel 8:11-20; 2 Samuel 7:12-16). But His time here was to usher in a new kingdom and new world, not to mend the corruption of the old world. In his interrogation with Pilate, He said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here” (John 18:36).

God’s purpose is to replace corrupted Creation with the new Creation enabled by the continual rejuvenation of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:20-24). This new Creation begins in the converted Christian and continues to all of Creation (Romans 8:18-26). All of Creation desires to be transformed by the revealing of the sons of God, wielding the power of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that floated over the deep in Genesis and raised Jesus from the dead (Genesis 1:2; Romans 8:9-11).

Every true believer, then, has the power over Creation that God had during Creation and has a relationship with the Spirit of God that raised our Lord from the dead.

I begin here to describe the dominion over Creation that Christ gives each of His followers. That is, freedom.

The freedom from the ways of the world include corrupt politics as well as corrupt persons, which include yourself. This is the liberation sought by every writer, thinker, spiritualist, activist and philosopher, ever, consciously or not. Freedom is the ability to be everything one is in union with God, where God is pure good, is love, is grace and is healing.

This world hates this freedom, because, like Stockholm’s syndrome, it has attachments with its abuser that prevent it from living in freedom. To the extent that Creation itself yearns for the revealing of the sons of God, the resistance that one experiences when seeking and living in the freedom of God can just be likened to the walls of Daedalus, forming and preventing one from finding the goal: the destruction of the maze, the pure freedom of the Garden of Eden.

To the extent that one’s training, skills and vocabulary become a barrier to communion with others, let alone God, one is engaged in an altar to the self that will be destroyed like every other one that has ever been erected. Words should communicate, rather than conceal.

Christians, then, are free from the Law, i.e., the Law that prevents the communion and personal relationship with God, whether these are internal chains or external habits. To this extent, I invite each of you to sit on a sidewalk for a while and pray until you’re comfortable being in a place where the world says you should be walking. Every way of the world is dead and will be crucified on the cross.

Freedom involves living in the salvation provided on the cross and in the resurrection, in the will of and communion with God. May our lives be a perpetual adoration of His goodness.

Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist. Yet, he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he is!” (Matthew 11:11). May we rise to our stations as sons of God, greater than Samuel, Elijah and Isaiah, according to our Lord and Savior.

Amen.