Freedom Is a Choice

I've been hearing from God for some months that He is preparing to set many people free.

That was, of course, God's promise in the passage of Isaiah that Jesus chose for His first public teaching (Luke 4).  And after He read that scripture, Jesus told the people gathered in Nazareth's synagogue that it was about Him: that He had come to

 "...proclaim release to the captives,

And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set free those who are oppressed..."
 

My theology is that God doesn't change: and that what He promises, He will do.  He sent Jesus to set free all who will receive Him.  Jesus still does what The Father sent Him to do.  Jesus still sets people free.  And nothing is more certain than that Jesus will continue setting free all who will receive Him.

That is the hope and the very "Good News" for increasingly dark and evil times like these.  Hearing Him so certainly speaking "Freedom !", I praise God more than ever.

But the fact is that some people don't want to be free.

Union soldiers marching through the South in the last days of the Civil War, destroying the homes and infrastructure of Confederates, delighted in announcing to slaves that they were now free.  But their journals and letters often record their amazement at the slaves' response.

Some slaves didn't really understand what it meant that they were "free."  Union soldiers told them it meant that they didn't have to work for their masters anymore, that master didn't own them anymore: that they could do what they wanted and go where they wanted.  Union soldiers were often amazed that, when they understood...many slaves didn't want to be free.

 It's not really hard to understand.  We all have a strong operative impetus toward the familiar.  We like to be with the people we know, doing what we're used to, in places we're familiar with.  Criminal investigators and profilers use this very human tendency to solve crimes, looking at criminals' patterns of behavior, Modus Operandi, and "zone of comfort."

Even Jesus' disciples acted in those human ways.  After Jesus' resurrection and their return to Galilee (which Mark and Matthew say He commanded them), seven of them went back to fishing !  (John 21:1ff)
 


But we consider slavery an unnatural state for human beings.  At least, so the Declaration of Independence argues: and that argument (unlike many others in the Declaration) probably has some scriptural basis.  Man is created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), for example; so oppressing any man is an offense against God.  Creating a lesser class, to force them to do the will of other men (the definition slavery) is contrary to God's Own just impartiality toward all men (Romans 2:11, and Ephesians 6:9).

How then are men persuaded to accept their slavery, contrary God's will ?  We naturally think of the tortures and murder by which American slavery was enforced on its victims.  But Frederick Douglass, who had been raised a slave, and been beaten by one of his masters to "break" him, was more perceptive.  A man is only effectually enslaved when he is "contented" in his slavery, said Douglass.  And

"...to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one.  It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason."

Slavery is a mindset.  Slaves will only willingly and cheerfully do the will of another when their understanding of what is right, and what is true, is effectually "darkened."  Men will only remain slaves when they choose to surrender what cannot by any means be taken from them...their God-given power of reason.

There are many slaves in the American Church today.  Many Christians who have "bought" the enslaving ways-of-thinking their political masters have taught them: most destructive among these, their unBiblical self-image as "conservatives." 

Many in the American Church today, and for the last 40 years, have willingly and cheerfully done the will of their political masters.  Even when their masters ordered them in recent years to serve the deeply anti-Christian spirit of Mormonism, or the forces of pride and unrighteousness...they did so.  Willing slaves, content in their slavery...they did as they were told.

 God has promised freedom to the captives and the oppressed.  His word is sure, and the increasing frequency and insistence of that word convinces me that His chosen time of liberation is at hand.  He is preparing to set FREE all who will hear Him, and receive Him, and receive from Him what He is gracious to give.

Some will not.

In Frederick Douglass' insight, those thoughtless of righteousness, and the unreasoning content in their slavery, will not want to be free.  Freedom is a choice: and that means people can also choose against it.

But God bless all who welcome Jesus as their Master, and accept freedom from Him: they will be free INDEED.  God covets the sincere praise and worship of the truly free, His Own freedmen, above all others'.