Bulletin April 2022
by Carl Billington
The Responsibility of Freedom
Greetings everyone. Following on from the previous discussion of freedom in the last bulletin, I wanted to offer a slightly different perspective on what freedom means.
Typically, when people claim there has been a violation of their freedom, what they mean is that someone else is exercising power over them in a way that erodes their right to choose differently.
When we relate to freedom as a right, it becomes something we need to defend.
Rights are a great thing to have accorded to us, and the recognition of rights has been a powerful liberating force in society, however when rights become the main frame of reference for how you relate to the world, things start to disintegrate quite rapidly, as we’ve seen very vividly in recent times.
In essence, this perspective seems to see freedom as a lack of restriction: I am free to the degree to which no one can tell me what to do. It’s a flawed view. If I want the freedom to drive, I must first master the rules of the road and the mechanisms of my car. There are always some restrictions I must embrace first, within which I can express freedom. This was true of Adam and Eve who could be described as the ‘free-est’ people in history (initially at least).
In musical terms, if you give me a trombone, I am currently free to do anything I want with it but the one thing I can’t do is make music out of it – I currently have no idea how to play a trombone. The irony is that my total freedom of restriction, by not knowing the rules that apply, actually renders me completely powerless to create any actual music.
I don’t know anything about trombones, but I know a bit more about guitar. I’ve disciplined myself to learn a whole lot of rules and principles that I can now utilise with a growing degree of freedom to make creative choices – I’ve embraced the ‘yoke’ of theory and building my technique and as a result I’m enjoying a growing freedom of ability to create and compose.
With a trombone I have no yoke, no restrictions, but I can not use it creatively at all. There’s a deep irony here that those who relate to their sense of freedom through a lens of rights fail to grasp. They end up undermining the very thing they claim to fight for.
If I want to create music, I must master the rules of composition. Without that you can argue I am free to play an instrument however I want, but it won’t be music…certainly not in any form anyone could enjoy listening to.
To gain real freedom, you must first submit to being mastered by a higher set of laws or restrictions. Freedom comes through restriction, not through its absence. As Jesus said, lose your life and then you’ll find it (Matthew 10:39).
A better way to relate to freedom is as a responsibility – something I possess and am responsible for how I use it. Viewed this way freedom is not something I feel I am owed, but something I feel responsible for maintaining and growing and stewarding well.
This is much more constructive approach – it is less selfish, less prone to breeding bitterness and aggression and conflict – but it still doesn’t tell us what freedom actually is.
I’d like to suggest this: Freedom is the ability to exercise creative choice.
The degree to which I am free determines the degree to which I am able to make creative choices in a given situation.
This is why there are so many warnings in scripture against the things in life that can become addictions for us. This is also why Paul so emphatically states in Corinthians that although ‘“Everything is permissible for me” – but I will not be mastered by anything,’ (1 Corinthians 6:12).
Anything that enslaves me limits my ability to make creative choices – the addiction drives me and has already chosen for me. Again we see the irony – should I decided to throw off the shackles of virtue and exercise my freedom to indulge my vices, I inevitably lose the very freedom I so defiantly claimed to assert.
Fear does the same thing – I can’t make creative choices in life if fear rules me and prevents me from taking opportunities. The fear is precluding choices for me, it prevents me from pursuing the avenues and opportunities in life that it obstructs. To overcome fear, I must embrace courage and obedience and let go of self-preservation – again, losing my life to find it.
In a world plagued by death, pain, frustration, greed and suffering, we desperately need people who have kept their spirits free and are able to make fresh, creative choices about how to respond to the challenges around us, finding ways to bring life from death.
This is why people like Nelson Mandela remain free while imprisoned behind bars.
We possess a freedom the world didn’t give us – and what it didn’t give, it cannot take away.
This is the power the children of the King are to exhibit in this world and that comes from our freedom in Christ.
We are called to a living relationship with Jesus, not a religious ideology. When ideology replaces relationship, we move from a commitment that we hold to, to something that instead possesses us. When we get this wrong, it skews so many aspects of our life.
Jesus told us we were to know the truth and the truth would set us free (John 8:32). This is because the truth is a person, not merely a set of correct ideas or accurate facts. Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth (John 14:17, John 15:26, John 16:13) and Paul tells us that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,” (2 Corinthians 3:17). Freedom comes from a living relationship with the Lord and Spirit of Truth, not by having correct ideologies or religious ideas. We find freedom in him and the adventures we have in our life in him should lead us to exercising our creative power of choice in ways that change this world and liberate others. That is the power of freedom the saints possess.
Freedom is not a right, it is a responsibility.
It is not the absence of restriction, it is the ability to exercise creative choice.
May each of us move towards increasingly creative expressions of freedom, overcoming the pain and delusion of the world around us as we are conformed more and more in his likeness.
God bless,
Carl Billington