Tags
blogging, culture, discussion, faith, freedom, insanitybytes, life, obedience, opinion, relationship
“The Christian Soul: The Problem of Freedom” Is the title of a post by dpatrickcollins that offers some interesting food for thought. Click to read the whole thing, but he speaks of obedience and freedom and some of the confusion around it that we seem to have in the modern age.
These are issues I too have wrestled with. Believe it or not, in spite of all my defiance and rebellion, I am quite obedient, the issue always being, obedient to Whom and to what? I’ve had a bazillion people trying to tell me what to do and life circumstances trying to tell me what to do, so the struggle has actually been about trying to silence all those voices and figure out what God wants me to do. Often what God wants me to do have been the precise opposite of what other people have wanted from me.
One problem being, God wants me to do surprisingly little. Seriously! It’s a bit funny because God wants me to receive His love, walk in His grace, and give Him honor and glory in all things. That may sound like a big task, but for someone who is more of a Martha who wants wants to “do,” scramble about, fix, achieve, accomplish “things,” that is more like a time out. Like being sent to your room. Sit at His feet?! Rest in the Lord?? I’m telling you, it’s enough to make me rethink this whole obedience thing.
Freedom is another interesting concept. While I am totally all about freedom, one of those defiant Americans who is darned if anyone is ever going to infringe on my rights, when I have unwrapped the notion of “freedom,” in a personal sense, freedom is the last thing I want. Freedom actually means to be unattached, to answer to no one. Freedom is kind of a sad thing in the context of orphans left to fend for themselves. Homeless people for example are free of housing costs, people who haven’t got children are free of parenting, get fired and you are free of your job, and if your spouse leaves you, you’re free of marriage.
It dawned on me at some point in this journey, that I have actually spent a life time trying to relieve myself of all this freedom. I was not seeking a life of freedom but rather of roots and ties and connection. Even obedience. To not have those things is a bit like free falling through the universe, with no walls, no boundaries, no limitations, and no love.
It’s a bit interesting, there was once this massive storm in my life, none of it my fault at all, nothing I could control or prevent, and when I asked the Lord what to do, how to respond, I got hit with pure, sheer, unconditional grace, grace so huge every sin, past, present and future was already forgiven. I could not make a wrong decision. The world was my oyster, I had total freedom. All that love actually scared the heck out of me, it triggered a good existential crisis, it washed away everything I thought I knew and understood about the Lord in an instant. It changed everything.
Obedience and freedom, rather than being all about choices and being able to do as you please, suddenly became all about, what can I do to be pleasing? My will and God’s will merged, if only for a fraction of a moment, and the whole concept of being pleasing to Him wasn’t about earning anything or avoiding punishment, it was more like falling in love, like the sheer delight you get from just staring into someone’s eyes and watching them smile. I want to please you, it is what I live for, it is why I am here.
Needless to say, I do not levitate 3 feet off the ground everyday, nor am I a saintly thing always walking in perfect obedience, but the memory of those moments is now sealed on my heart, that one drop of heaven is written all over my soul.
I really am curious about what others think and know about obedience and freedom and what their experiences have been, so fire away.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
In Bible class yesterday we were talking about Christian freedom and adiaphora–those times when God neither says “Thou shalt” or “Thou shalt not.” The occasion was I Corinthians 7, where Paul talks about getting married and not getting married and says they’re both fine with God; each should do what God has equipped him or her to do. We’ll be hitting the same topic next week when we look at I Corinthians 8, about meat that has been offered to idols. I’m sure we will range to rock music, Harry Potter, and all the other things some Christians love and others condemn.
As you describe, we are more comfortable under Law than under Grace, even though the Law condemns us for our failures while Grace frees us from our failures. The comfort aspect is why there are so many religions in the world and so many versions of Christianity–each trying to find some guarantee of being right with God through our efforts, whereas true Christianity reveals God making us right with him entirely through his work. J.
LikeLiked by 3 people
“…..true Christianity reveals God making us right with him entirely through his work”
Yes,amen! I like what you said about how it is more comfortable being under the law. Life is simpler, you can just follow the rules which are always cut and dry.
I like the tale of the rich young ruler who has kept all the commandments and the Lord says,okay, now sell all your stuff. I imagine the guy thinking, “now hold up,that isn’t in the rulebook, I’m only required to obey under these limited conditions.” I suspect what God wants from us is trust and surrender,rather than our own somewhat limited perceptions of “obedience.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for sharing – your post was nice & clear
LikeLiked by 1 person
Actually, IB, you hit on something when you said freedom becomes “what can I do to be pleasing?” Our Founding Fathers’ idea of liberty was much closer to that than our concept today. Today, it has become the 60s idea of “don’t tell me what to do.” They were very much into governments and authorities. Their idea of “liberty” was the freedom to do what is right. For example, the reason we have a first amendment right to freedom of religion is because in Europe, there was no freedom of conscience, but state churches telling you how to believe (mostly contrary to the Bible) and forcing you to tithe even if you didn’t conform to their church. We have a 2nd amendment, because the British had the right to bear arms after they kicked their Catholic Stuart kings to the curb.
Similarly, grace is not a license to do what is wrong,but to do what is right. The Law made no man perfect because it was all about ritual and performing actions rather than having faith and being led by the Spirit. Jesus didn’t condemn the 10 commandments; he fulfilled them with his perfect sacrifice. When we love our neighbor, we are not going to perform ill toward our neighbor and therefore according to the Law of Christ are going to perform that which is pleasing and right in the sight of God. Men used the Law as a cloak to condemn people. I bring this out in my fiction book, Liberty’s Promise which not only discusses the issues surrounding marital submission, but also the submission of a people to a King.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You make a good point about the founding fathers, Pam. Liberty, freedom, was more about having the freedom to do the right thing,rather than the freedom to do whatever caught your fancy, as the modern world kind of believes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You said so many different things here that I could give an hearty “amen” to. I will pick your summary here:
“My will and God’s will merged, if only for a fraction of a moment, and the whole concept of being pleasing to Him wasn’t about earning anything or avoiding punishment, it was more like falling in love, like the sheer delight you get from just staring into someone’s eyes and watching them smile. I want to please you, it is what I live for, it is why I am here.”
This is exactly what John meant when he said God’s perfect love casts out our (orphan-hearted) fear (1 John 4:18). Spiritual orphans, like natural orphans, fear punishment and/or rejection and abandonment for poor performance. When our heavenly Father’s unconditional love deals with this lie, our motives are transformed.
Another anathematic word in the American mindset is “surrender.” We individualistic souls cringe at the thought. But, with Christ, surrender is not really about surrendering our behavior to Him. He never wanted these “bull and goat offerings.” When we do this our heart still longs for those behaviors. But when we surrender our heart, the right behavior will follow.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I love what you wrote 🙂 I basically believe we’re here to be proved, tested. For this, we need to have a choice, therefore we are free to choose, a spiritual sense, free to follow the Lord, which keeps us free and leads to life eternal, or free to sin, ultimately leading to captivity. The ability to choose is a great eternal gift!
LikeLiked by 2 people
It’s the freedom to be who you are without the constraints of mortality impeding the realization of the ultimate destination. We all will sin, we will not form perfect judgements, and that’s okay, as long as we don’t make the mortal stuff consume us to the point where we forget ourselves again and lose our connection to God. That’s a trap that gets deeper with every fall, until you can’t climb out without a lot of help.
LikeLiked by 1 person
More than likely i think no matter what we do it will be almost wrong except in our desire to please Him. No, I’m not saying we are always wrong only that it isn’t Holy and sufficient unto itself. That comes only from God. We should obey with the idea that it will always fall short but good enough for Him to accept it as a gift.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I so enjoyed this post and related to so much of what you wrote. I appreciate the food for thought but need some time to process this further. Thank you – it feels like being steered in the right direction. I’m grateful for that 😊💜🌻
LikeLiked by 1 person
First thank you insanityb for the reblog. And I must admit: you hit on so many ideas in your insightful reflection upon my post that you have rendered my next follow-up sheer plagiarism!
But not entirely. In writing on the topic of Christian spirituality, what I am after you have succinctly put into words, that obedience is not so much falling on the rocks of hard labor for the gospel as it is falling in love, and often (surprisingly far too often I too find) doing less and not more. Thanks for your insights 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
My firing away and 02.
In a world clearly away from God, what man (or woman thank you) would say with a straight face that we deserve freedom AT ALL?
Are we more deserving msb than the men who died to give us this freedom as a citizen? No, they probably deserved it more, and it was denied.
Do we deserve this freedom as a believer? doubt it.
Do we have freedom as employees? A little, but as long as it doesn’t interfere with our commanded work.
But the obedience thing……….I am of the opinion that God’s will is 99% clearly spelled out, but we make the mistake in focusing on the one per cent that may be ambiguous, and in the process, get lost as fog as to the 99.
Ask any spouse what is the right thing to do. They/we know. It’s built in. Now the doing of that, ha, that’s another story. 😉
But you touched on it too, the doing nothing is sometimes undervalued. Like the Lord doing ‘nothing’ when He heard of the death of Lazarus. Kind of hard for the sisters and brethren to rest in obedience, especially when their eyes were clouded with grief, but there were greater things on the table that they just could not perceive…………….at the time.
So His ‘nothing’ was actually ‘everything.’
LikeLiked by 1 person
What a good word, Colorstorm! Timely, too. His nothing really is “everything.”
Good point about how 99% is clear, but we get obsessed about that 1% that might be ambiguous. It’s like how I try to talk about surrender and submission and someone always comes along and mentions a bank robbery. So are you going to surrender to a bank robbery? Are you going to lie to Nazis? Say wut? Nazis, rum running, and bank robbery, are just not on the moral radar right now. They don’t shape my world view. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I tink weebe on the same page here. lol.
Don’t forget the Crusades or Hitler too eh. Because men can be monsters, blame it on God or scripture.
LikeLiked by 1 person
For years IB, I was a slave. To my sin, to my desire to get all of the “stuff” that I could. Like all of the Godless, I screamed from the roof top how free I was. The day Jesus took charge of me and God’s Holy Spirit filled me my entire life became about making myself a slave yet again; I wanted to be a bondservant of the Lord Jesus Christ in all things from that moment, Oddly, at that same moment I became freer than I had ever been.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Amen, Wally! Preach it. 🙂
LikeLike