Has there been a time since man's alienation from God, when this sad reality has not been a part of the experience? I think so much of the reason for the absence of love for the other, is that we are left feeling out of control and lost and afraid......because we are out of control and lost and afraid. Professing with our mouths a belief in God doesn't change this. Something else has to happen. If this experience just remains in the realm of belief, freedom remains in the realm of mere belief also. A belief about freedom has not the power to free anyone. If we are not being set free, we will continue to resort to kicking our brothers and sisters in a hole because it is easier to do that then it is to live with them.
Real freedom scare us, because real freedom is the opposite of what we have come to understand freedom to be. We have been shaped to believe it is our Independence that makes us free. We could not possibly be anymore wrong about this.
Jesus was the first true human to live totally free and he never once experienced Independence. Never. There is a reason Jesus never felt threatened by anyone or anything to where he resorted to harming another or taking for himself that which his father had not given. Why? Because he trusted the One whom he was fully dependent on.
Religion has failed in all it's attempts through out history, to produce people who truly live free. I'm left curious as to why so many continue to go down this road with this being the case?
All the while real freedom still awaits. For those that have found it, and many have, and continue to grow in more still.....there seems to be a common thread. They are not dominated by fear any longer. Fear leads those caught in it's grip to do many ugly things and allows them somehow to find justification for it.
The freedom found in Jesus will unwind the ugliness that our time living in captivity and fear has caused in us all. Do we really want to be free?.... seems to be a good question to ask ourselves? Trying to explain away all the fall out caused by not being free just seems to be a silly practice but a very common one none the less.
2 comments:
Hey Kent,
You know the saying about art, being appreciated for what it is worth, valued in the eye of the beholder? Well, that's the beauty of being able to see, sometimes, just what the author, painter, artist was trying to capture, but most of the time what was created was but an opportunity to see beyond even what they captured.
Does this make any sense at all?
What came to me from your posts here was this line from Janis Joplin's song..Me and Bobby McGee..
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose,
Nothing don't mean nothing honey if it ain't free.
Yeah, an' feeling good was easy, lord, bobby sang the blues,
You know feeling good was good enough for me, hmm mm,
Good enough for me and my bobby mcgee.
Rich
Rich I love this idea you expressed:
"You know the saying about art, being appreciated for what it is worth, valued in the eye of the beholder? Well, that's the beauty of being able to see, sometimes, just what the author, painter, artist was trying to capture, but most of the time what was created was but an opportunity to see beyond even what they captured.
Does this make any sense at all?"
Seeing beyond the normal/natural or apparent, is very important, and the way information is delivered these days rarely in and of itself engages and encourages us to think beyond and discover the mystery of what God has created....how we have made a mess of things...and what it means to break free of all the mess so as to find that place of peace and rest in the Father again.
Freedom isn't this thing we have grown up in that makes way for us to get all we want. Real freedom allows us to see the emptiness of it all so that all we want is him and what he has for us......recognizing that he has given us each other is such a big part of that awesome discovery. When we discover that, I think we will stop hurting each other.
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