freedom

I wish I could have written this yesterday while the thoughts were still fresh. it stems from a video shown at church. a couple lines caught my attention.

the video starts out describing aspects of freedom, mostly aspects of our "possessing" freedom, and ends by saying essentially freedom can only be found in Christ (which, of course, is absolutely true). it didn't use the word freedom until the very end, pasted across a background of the cross. the first half of the video, in describing all these aspects of freedom, use pictures of people holding flags and whatnot, people at rallies and so forth.

what caught my attention was a couple particular lines: "we were born with it" and "it is our right".

apparently the makers of this video were talking about Americans and not about Christians. Americans were born with all kinds of freedoms, freedom of speech, freedom of religion (the first few lines of the video talked about this freedom), and so on. it is indeed a right, written into the American constitution, that all Americans can and will be free (the definition of said freedom is open to interpretation, of course).

Christians were born into bondage, namely the bondage of sin. the foundational doctrine of Christianity is that we are slaves to our sin, slaves to this world, and we cannot "do right" or be righteous until Christ saves us out of our sin. we weren't born with freedom, we were born a slave to death. also, and more importantly in my opinion, once a slave to death becomes a Christian, he becomes a slave to righteousness (to use the words of a famous Christian author). our life is no longer our own (which isn't truly "our own" anyway given the sin nature) but instead is dedicated to the cause of Christ. or at least it should be.

many people in America seem to think that freedom in Christ is equivalent with religious freedom, freedom of speech, and the bill of rights. too many well-meaning Christians place a higher value on American values than on Christian values. too many people want to live their own lives in "freedom" without having to answer to anybody.

too many people forget the slave-nature of Christianity. we are called to be bondservants of Christ, not autonomous do-gooders. one will be told "well done good and faithful servant", another will be told "get away from Me, I never knew you".