Sitting Bull and William Wallace, our "founding fathers" and Jim Morrison...seems like there is a heart's cry for freedom.
According to Dylan, "...you're gonna have to serve somebody..." and I'm incline to believe that.
But who you serve and why you serve says everything about your heart's cry and the condition of your soul.
Karl Marx dreamed of a world where ownership was a thing of the past and all men worked free of the oppression that comes from the skew of capitalistic merit. But his dream didn't have room for a god...or at least the one true God.
After we're finished being offended at Marx's godless world view, was there something to Marx dream after all?
Do we become enslaved to our "free enterprise" system?
Is there something better? And what does that look like?
Oddly enough we find both capitalism and communism (or perhaps socialism would be closer to it) in the Bible and apart from a strict theocracy given to a very specific group of people, God seems to be much more concerned that we play fair at whatever form of government we might choose than giving instruction on which form of government to choose. For in those various forms of government, whatever they might be, politics are really only just a small part of living free.
In the testimony of Saints long gone we find that some of the freest people in history have lived under terribly oppressive conditions...yet they found freedom right where they were.
And so it is that freedom requires a change in motivation and expectation.
Or as Sheryl Crow puts it, "…happiness isn’t getting what you want, it’s wanting what you’ve got."...as it relates in this circumstance, recognizing the freedom that God has already provided you as a free moral agent and the power that He has given you to overcome any situation is what true freedom is all about.
These are the truths, that if fully understood, or "known", will set us free to a depth and degree that politicians may never understand. In fact, the freedom our founding fathers were attempting to establish is the political freedom to choose this greater freedom of the heart without fear of retaliation. The freedom to pursue your heart's cry.
Living free has different meanings to wide range of people, but to me, living free is recognizing that I have been gifted with an eternal life that no man can take from me regardless of the merit they place on me…I have the sun and moon and the stars, warm breezes, the laughter of children, the ability to communicate my ideas and communion with the Almighty. And all of these gifts without merit, totally out of love…my provisions for survival. My vision for a future, my health and safety are all gifts. And my service to my King is out of gratitude and not compulsion. And it brings faith and not fear…the truer that I am to what I believe, the greater my faith and the greater my freedom.
But in this confusing world we live in today in "Western culture" our faith is being challenged by compromise.
We are constantly being sold the idea that we can have one foot in and one foot out, that we can have a successful secular life without interfering with our spiritual life…that we can, in effect, serve two masters. And as we have already been warned, our divided hearts war against both God and man as we are rendered prisoner of our own micro-kingdoms, trapped upon worthless thrones with plastic septors.
So…in essence, choosing to live free requires choosing to serve.
And who you choose to serve ultimately determines what type of freedom you will live.
Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:14 pm
