True Freedom

We just celebrated our freedom and liberty on Independence Day here in the United States. If you ask what freedom means, you’ll get a lot of various answers. Some claim it is a life without restrictions. I claim that true freedom comes from a life with the correct boundaries firmly in place.

I was a teen in the 80s. I found it a confusing era with no set formula to anything. It could be whatever you chose it to be. I remember going to a dance and it looked like a gyration fest rather than any set formula. Patriotism seemed a lot stronger because eight of those years of that decade were under Reagan. Most of us that joined the military felt some pride in doing so and figured we were there to keep us safe from a nuclear disaster that could happen if anything changed with the Cold War.

I felt like I could be whatever I wanted. It turned out that I didn’t have the freedom to do that. Free of bullying at school, I found being a geek girl with a strong inclination toward mechanics, math and engineering did not fit the program. So in a world claiming there were no boundaries, I found plenty of them. Trying to fit in made me a very cynical and blunt twenty-something.

I needed the correct boundaries to figure out who I was supposed to be and how to cope in a world regardless if I fit or not. Plenty of trial and error proved where it did not exist. Having some friends that portrayed Christianity without touting rules proved refreshing and led to my openness for digging deeper into why they were different. None of them were perfect, and that is not what it is about. They showed me how the relationship with Christ was supposed to look. It made me ready to sit down with a bible at my parents’ and go to church with my mom and grandmother. In the end, it was God who proved where the genuine power that could set you free to be yourself came from.

Not all things that are allowed are good for you because they are not based on firm truth. Just because they make us feel good and don’t hurt anyone—supposedly—doesn’t mean they are right. There are plenty of stories in the Bible where a little indulgence of something led to ruinous results over time. We start out trying a little, but wind up needing more and more to feel the same. Soon we are addicted to substances, food, attention, recognition, power, and the list goes on.

I like how Paul sums this up in Romans 6:19-23. The following is in the NLT version that I feel flows better with our modern language, but still brings home the point.

19 Because of the weakness of your human nature, I am using the illustration of slavery to help you understand all this. Previously, you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led ever deeper into sin. Now you must give yourselves to be slaves to righteous living so that you will become holy. 20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the obligation to do right. 21 And what was the result? You are now ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom. 22 But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

We have to be bound by the right rules so that we may live the abundant life promised by God for all those who believe in him. He sent Jesus, his Son, to teach us the way he truly intended us to do this. Jesus promised we would always have the Holy Spirit with us in this life to help guide us in the ways we needed to go for eternal life.

I love that God’s truth defies human logic. We can get so wrapped in finding our own rules to wrap things in and wind up making it worse. At some point, our flimsy ideas fall apart in the first gust of trial. Mine sure did and all that striving to fit a mold the world shoved at me led to anger and an unhelpful self indulgence. So much so, I’m still learning things I have to shed as I peel back the layers to find who God truly made me to be.

I rather be considered a slave of God rather than sin. It’s led to a far more fruitful life in ways I never expected, despite all the trials I faced, am going through now, and the new ones to come. Start talking with the Christians that make you wonder about life like I did. You will start seeing a truth that will lead you to seeing God’s Word in another light if you give it a chance. Come join the adventure of finding out who God really made you to be and find the freedom to be that person now and forevermore.

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