fear and freedom

"Aint it funny how the night moves,

When you just don't seem to have as much to lose,

Strange how the night moves,

With autumn closing in..."

- Night Moves, Bob Seger

When is the last time that you felt free? I'm talking truly liberated, way down in your heart and in your soul? Our society is, by most accounts, the most free it's ever been. Now, before I get bum-rushed, yes--there are still freedoms that are restricted. There is Prop 8 and there is the Patriot Act and there are still unofficial social mores that govern what we are and are not "supposed" to do. But by and large, we have reached a point of unprecedented individual freedom in our culture. With relatively few exceptions, the doctrine of postmodernism and relative truth has allowed us to do what we want, when we want, in whatever way we want without having to fear being burned at the stake, shunned by the village, or outright killed. And in most urban areas, we won't get so much as a second glance.

All restrictions and morality are out the window, except for those that we create for ourselves. We are utterly master-less; we answer to no one and have no agenda. We are without limits of any kind. But if that's the case, why don't we feel the freedom that we supposedly have?

As a good little Christian girl who grew up in a good little Christian home and went to good little Christian schools my whole life, I can tell you firsthand of the absolute rush that accompanies breaking the rules. It is exhilarating to throw a wrench into the machine--to just plain disobey. And at first, it certainly does feel liberating. Like speeding down the highway with the windows rolled down and your head sticking out sort of feeling.

...But eventually, I've found, that car runs out of gas. Or maybe it's more that you think you're driving, only to found out that the damn thing was on autopilot the whole time. Whatever metaphor you slap on it, the feeling that I was left with was...lacking. Restricting. Definitely not free. And the reason is this: simply throwing out the rulebook does not, and will never, free our spirits. It frees our limbs to act and our mouths to speak, but it can never break the chains on our captive hearts--the burning core of us that knows that there is something more, that we were made for something more than the reckless pursuit of our ever-changing whims.

All too often I find that the move from a "less free" environment to a "more free" one (say, the jump from living with your overprotective parents in high school to living on your own at a dorm at college) just ends up being a new set of rules, with a new authority. Instead of not being allowed to say curse words because your parents think it's wrong, now you're not allowed to be a Republican because your friends think it's evil, or you're not allowed to stay a virgin because your boyfriend/girlfriend thinks it's pointless. We may think we're living the good life, flying high above the restrictive world of our upbringing, but in reality we're just in a different cage. A much cooler one, to be sure--with trendy wallpaper and hip ambient lighting--but a cage nonetheless.

We are still looking to someone else to tell us who we are, and what we should and should not do. And that person that we're looking to is looking to someone else, and they're looking to someone else, and so on and so forth.

So where does real freedom come from? (Come on, you knew this was coming...)

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life SET ME FREE from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. - Romans 8:1-3

The "law of sin and death" that Christ freed us from goes A LOT deeper than just the lies we tell and the atrocities we commit. It encompasses the entirety of the Fall of Man, the whole spectrum of consequences that resulted from our separation from God. And one of the biggest consequences was our collective identity crisis. The social laws that exist in every walk of life, in every society, that say we must do a certain thing and act a certain way and toe a certain line in order to be loved. In order to matter.

For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. - Romans 8:13-17

God offers us something incredible here--the only thing I have ever found to be truly, wholly liberating. The identity of a child of God. And not a superficial identity like we find in the world, not the sort of thing that you can write on a nametag or post on a Facebook profile, and that you can't find three people to agree on the meaning of. The identity that Paul is talking about here is dynamic. It is the continual, ongoing affirmation of love and acceptance taking place between God's heart and ours--"the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children."

Once you have that, whoa buddy, watch out. Swing wide the gates and prepare to watch your chains disintegrate.

I like that Bob Seger song because it speaks of longing for freedom, of trying desperately to find it, and of time running out. As I get older and the remnants of my teenage immortality fade away, I have become much more conscious of the parameters of our time here on this earth. They are not so wide and so deep as you may think. The time we spend in our chains becomes more and more tragic with each passing day. So I'll pass along a question that was posed to the students at the World Missions Summit:

What would you do if you had no fear?

What would you do if your identity was secure, if your heart was so much in communion with God's that you could truly, utterly care less what anyone else in the world thought?

What would you do?

"For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again."

- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button