What Does Freedom Mean?

For some reason, I never fully got Scriptures like Galatians 5:13 that say things like, "You were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature." Scriptures where we're not to use our freedom to live just as we like but to live for God. I can't say I ever really thought much about them, except to agree that, yes, we as Christians are free, and yes, we must not do evil. The connection between being free and not doing evil never quite manifested itself to me--they seemed two quite separate things (though both under the heading of "Life in Christ" or some such thing). I think maybe my American worldview got in the way, because there's always been this sense that freedom means a wide-open horizon without restrictions. At least that's how I'd describe others describing it.
Then recently it suddenly made itself quite clear to me, in chapel or class or church, and it seems very absurd that I never really got it before. This American worldview has quite the wrong idea of what freedom really is. Well, maybe it's largely right in the sheerly earthly sense, but not in its most ultimate sense, and there it gets in the way.
To bring it down to the very basics, the human condition is slavery. When humans were created, they were in glorious freedom, being who they were meant to be, in perfect relationship with God. When they sinned, they chose to step out of freedom into slavery to be something they weren't created for. Now the world shows the effects of that, people running around trying to find their freedom, doing what seems right to them and finding it still enslaves them in pain, fear, anger, loneliness, emptiness.
And when we come to Christ, we return to what we were meant for. We are freed from what has enslaved humanity since the beginning. So the statement that we can't use our freedom as an excuse to sin is countering the view that says freedom is doing whatever we want. Freedom is much more--it's being released from a condition that destroys us and returned to the relationship we were created for. Before, we couldn't help sinning--we were slaves. Now we are free not to sin. Free not to destroy ourselves. Which means we are free to so much more--free to love and joy and hope and relationship--all the things people search for and are held back from. Now we are free to be who God created us to be.

Gentle and Quiet--Feminine or Christ-like?

1 Peter 3:4 “[Your beauty] should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.”

This verse is addressed to women. Over the years, this gentle and quiet spirit has become quite a horror to women, because culturally it has come to mean allowing men any and every kind of domination and oppression. Throughout our history it’s come to mean women can’t speak, can’t do, can’t protest, can’t hardly exist except as a pretty backdrop for the affairs or men. But that’s not at all what it meant! I don’t think Peter was talking about women’s roles but about their attitude, nor do I think Peter is necessarily trying to make any comparison or contrast between the attitudes of men and women; he’s just recognizing that women have a tendency to come to faith in Christ before men and that having a Christ-like attitude will be the greatest witness to their unbelieving husbands. It’s still true. One thing no one ever notices was that it was Jesus’ attitude here on Earth, that of God Himself, an attitude it would be an honor to bear.

And as I examine the words gentle and quiet and their many meanings, I realize that it’s an attitude very attractive to me. The words have come to mean weakness—gentleness as opposed to strength, meekness as opposed to character and will power, but in actuality, they work right along with strength. Gentle: praeos—gentle, kind, considerate, meek, without harshness in interactions with others. Apply it to Christ: He’s the Creator of the universe, and yet He encourages people to come to Him because He is praus—He has chosen not to be harsh with us, though we deserve it. Think of the immense power under immense control implied here! Quiet: Haysuchias—as possessing inward calm, quiet tranquil, peaceful, at rest. Isn’t that what many people want? Not to be gagged, as they have often used this verse to gag women, but to be at rest. Don’t so many people long for rest and peace within themselves? To have a quiet and calm heart—to not have to fight and rage and fear and flee. What an attractive prospect! It doesn’t mean such a person can’t be loud and happy and boisterous—maybe with certain personalities it would make such a person even louder in sheer joy. Though I personally prefer the quieter aspects of this quietness of spirit. I love the prospect of tranquil calm and dignity against all odds. Far from being demeaned or kept down by it, I would like to be a woman with this kind of spirit.

Not that vague sort of feeling you drum up before Thanksgiving dinner

I Peter 1:18-20 "For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world but was revealed in these last times for your sake."
These verses make it quite clear that God knew precisely what He was going to do about sinful humanity before we ever even had a chance to be sinful. It's such a strange thing to think that, even knowing all that would happen because of us--the sin, the pain, His own sacrifice--He still chose to create us. The group Selah's Christmas album, Rose of Bethlehem, has a song that goes, "The Father knew the Son would die, and He still created man." He knew before He ever started that the creation of humanity would require the death of His Son to save them, but He didn't just scrap the whole project and forget it. He considered it worth it.
That is what I'll go on record as being thankful for. Thankful! Not that vague sort of feeling you drum up before Thanksgiving dinner so you can say you're thankful for something. But, say, the gratitude of an adopted child who has gone from misery to joy, mixed with a sort of bewilderment and awe at it all.

The Borg as Human Traffickers

In a class one day last week, we talked about the problem of slavery in our world today, and later I watched an episode of Star Trek: Voyager that suddenly seemed very similar. For those who don't know, the Voyager character Seven of Nine was a human child named Annika Hansen who was with her parents on a sort of anthropological (xenological?) expedition to study the Borg before much was known about them. After two years, they were assimilated, and she grew up with few memories of anything but being Borg. When Voyager rescued her, she was furious. The Borg were her people, her family, and she felt kidnapped, not rescued. Eventually she came to embrace her humanity and to see the Borg for the nasty chaps they were.
Then she was taken by them again, but they didn't assimilate her, because they wanted her perspective on humanity as a human so they could better assimilate humans (having already failed in First Contact, the movie). The Borg Queen keeps trying to convince her that she belongs with the Borg, not with humans; she criticizes her appearance, since they removed most of her Borg technology and made her look human again. The Queen says, "They've made you over in their image," trying to get Seven to see humans as the bad guys.
And I suddenly remembered something about human trafficking, especially sex slavery. When people are taken when they're quite young and made into slaves, they're made to believe they're worth nothing but what their bodies can do for their owners. In essence, they are assimilated into their roles as objects, brainwashed just as surely as any Borg assimilation. And sometimes, when they're in it long enough, they come to fear anything else. This situation is horrible, but it's all they know, it's all they are fit for. Outside the situation is the frightening unknown, and if you drag someone out of that situation, you'll often find them obediently going back into it, because as bad as it is, it's known. I suddenly saw this Borg Queen as the trafficker, the one saying, "They may have cleaned you up and given you a different profession, but this is really what you're made for, and you will never be anything more than this. You shouldn't even want anything different. This is better." And Captain Janeway, determined to rescue Seven, was the one saying, "No, you're worth more than that."
In class that day, we talked about how that's why Jesus and the Holy Spirit are so essential to this work. Only Christ can get inside the lives that have been assimilated and transform them, so that people realize they are worth something better and there is more for them than they ever imagined. Fascinating parallels.

Redeeming Lydia Bennett

I was thinking about Lydia Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. Mr Collins says about her that her disposition must be naturally bad, and I was trying to separate her bad choices from her disposition. If she had not had such indulgent parents, what might she have been like? Then I started wondering about all the Bennett girls. What might each of them have been like if they were mature, growing Christians with their dispositions bent in the right direction? To separate Lydia from the excesses to which her disposition and unwise parenting led her, what is she like? She's outgoing, bright, sparkling, vivacious, ready to embrace people and think well of them, except those who stand between her and what she wants. She's stubborn, determined to get what she wants. Turn all that away from herself, and she'd be a very welcoming person, someone to make new people feel like they belong, an excellent hostess, and possibly even a good activist for oppressed people. Good with children, probably--they'd be attracted to her winsomeness.
It's hard to tell with Kitty, what her best possible character would be. A follower, not one with too many of her own thoughts, but with a strong sense of justice. Turn that to justice for others and give her a bit more strength of character, and she'd be a pretty neat person.
Mary now--a redeemed Mary would be quite my favorite. She's got a mind that turns away from all the silliness of her world and seeks knowledge and wisdom. She doesn't know what to do with it, never having been given any real training, so her attempts at wisdom and comfort come out all pedantic and silly. I like the way the newer movie of Pride and Prejudice shows her, all young and awkward and overshadowed by her four vivacious and beautiful sisters, and pretending she doesn't feel it as much as she does. She could learn a real wisdom and actually be a source of help to someone.
Elizabeth is a universal favorite, of course, and one of my favorites. Her charms are known--intelligent, witty, idealistic, kind, a lover of beauty. But, of course, she's also a little thoughtless, rash, too quick to judge by appearances, stubborn, certain that her ways are the ways, cynical. She could be a little more accepting of people's weaknesses, less apt to judge, less able to be fooled by pretty manners, a little wiser.
And Jane--well, Jane is all that is sweet and giving, what many would say is a true Christian character, though certainly one needn't be like Jane to be a true Christian. Her main defect is that she doesn't, or refuses to, understand the true nature of evil. That is not actually a good thing. To comprehend what God has done for us, one needs to comprehend what He has overcome in us and what remains in the world. To be able to have a clear outlook on the world and yet retain her kindness and love for the people in it would be a great gift for Jane and, indeed, for everyone around her.

What will God do against such reckless hate?

When I was reading the news online one morning last week, I learned that at a college in Virginia, Virginia Tech, someone had killed a person and wounded eight or so others. I felt very sad for them…but it happens so often…you’re always hearing how someone opened fire at CNN and killed two people, or something. It’s awful. Then after chapel in the afternoon, I learned that 32 had died. Soon discovered that two hours after the first shooting, the guy went elsewhere on campus and started killing people there. It might even have been happening while I was sitting there feeling sad for the family of the one person. It was such a shock, I suppose, to go looking for news of the eight injured and see the death toll suddenly jump to 32. And of course now I know that that won’t be the only toll. Some people will take a lot longer getting over this than just the mending of their physical bodies in the hospital. The line Théoden says in “The Two Towers” never fails to come to mind: “What can men do against such reckless hate?”

Some other things mix with my thoughts as I think about this horrible situation, things about the general condition of the world and humanity. I’m doing a lot of study into slavery for my book Blaise, The Deliverer, and it’s pretty awful. I was reading a book a few days ago called “Dehumanizing the Vulnerable” about the skillful use of language to make certain portions of the human race not seem human at all, thus giving people excuses for their depredations on them. Calling some races “subhuman”; calling unwanted pregnancies “parasites;” even calling prostitutes “sluts,” anything to emphasize that they’re not worth what the rest of us are. Just an hour later, I watched a fictional television episode about human trafficking, girls from Eastern Europe smuggled into the U.S. and enslaved, and how one, desperate to get free, killed a kind man who was trying to rescue another girl because he couldn’t rescue her, too. And recently I’ve watched three different versions of Les Miserables, and the characters in it that grip me the most are Fantine and Eponine, two young women with the most wretched lives possible who then die, largely without hope, without joy, in their wretchedness and misery. At least Fantine had Jean Valjean who took care of her during her last few days and promised to take care of her child and did, and Eponine had Marius who, though in love with another, gave her just a little tenderness and care before she died.

And then I’m doing a study of God’s holiness for Old Testament Theology, and what I’m finding out is that God would not let his Name be desecrated by Israel and the nations. Their sin desecrated it by, in essence, saying to the nations around them, “Our God is nothing more than your gods, no more powerful, no more important.” Their scattering in punishment desecrated it, because the nations believed that God had failed in his ability to protect Israel. All these things made God seem less than he is, and when he punished his people and when he brought them back, he was doing it so that His Name would be glorified and so that they would know that he alone was God. And it’s made me wonder, What about today? God’s own people desecrate his Name constantly, from things like behaving in ungodly ways at work, to things like making Christianity and thus God look bad in the public arena, to the horrific things like condoning slavery and the worst abuses. The horrible things rampant in this world make people ask, “Where is your God now?” and say, “If there really were a God, He wouldn’t let this happen.” So I can’t help wondering why God lets us dim the visibility of his glory and holiness now, when he took such stern measures against the Israelites. And of course I know that he revealed his holiness once and for all on the cross, and that he is exercising patience so that people can still have a chance to be saved, and that eventually he himself will return and reveal himself and his holiness with finality, and all chances will be over, but… I guess I just answered my own question. He’s revealed himself ultimately in Jesus, and now he’s giving humanity, which he loves, a chance to turn to him before he finally is done once and for all with sin and the things we do to each other and to him.

Thank God for the chance.

Be Lifted High

In chapel one time we had an extraordinary example of using all kinds of talents in the worship of God. A young woman did a special number, a ballet to the song that goes, “Be blessed, be loved, be lifted high, be treasured here, now glorified.” It was amazing. How often do you have ballet in church or chapel? It’s amazing how things of beauty move me, especially as they are done for God’s glory. Another day, a friend of mine played a violin piece in chapel, and again the use of the arts in worship delighted me. God has made me to be touched, impacted by these things and to participate in them. I love it. I love how He has made me and the talents He has given others. The cross is the basis for everything. Talents and arts informed by, dedicated to, presided over by the cross—what wonderful things they will be! It has been said before: the church ought to be the most creative place. We cannot dare to say that these talents God has given us have no place in the church. Why has He given them to us but for His glory?