FREEDOM

"If, however, Christianity and the church are in fact reactionary and static, it is becasue they have lost the basic meaning of the Christian life, which is freedom. They have transformed revelation into a religion. Religion is indeed a conservative, retarding, and restrictive force. In this transformation, fellowship with Christ is lost, and with it the purity for which everything is pure and everything is possible. This is why it seems to me that the most urgent and decisive task for Christianity today, on the basis of fellowship with Christ, is to recover the full meaning of freedom." Jacques Ellul The Ethics Of Freedom

How in the world have we so lost the revelation of God through Jesus, that we have been liberated, and instead traded it for a belief that makes it all about a God that bosses us around and forces us to conform and if we don't he becomes the ultimate tormentor?

Freedom is of ultimate importance. If we can't find enough freedom to reconsider who God really is, and who we are in him, we will remain stuck in a restrictive retarding system of belief that is completely impotent in liberating anyone from anything.