Freedom
>> Friday, July 10, 2009
In the summer of 2005, I found myself with an airline ticket to somewhere. It was my choice where. There’s a neat story behind that, one of the neatest I have actually, but I’ll save that for another time. I used that ticket to fly to Seattle, Washington, and visit Olympic National Park.
This was the summer after my second year of college. The year before had been hard, and I was at a point where I felt like I was on the cusp of something new. I knew I was going to have to make some decisions in the next year , and I thought these decisions would have long reaching impacts on my life.
Olympic National Park is an interesting place. It is essentially four parks in one. There is a high mountain region, an old growth forest, the Hoh rain forest, and a collection of rocky North Western beaches. I went for the rain forest, but I fell in love with the beaches.
The beaches of Olympic are rugged. The water is cold, having been carried South by the current from the Arctic, and the waves are strong. The shoreline is littered with splintered logs and piles of rocks. It’s not really a place to swim. It’s more of a place to be. When I was there, I spent my evenings walking along Ruby Beach, watching the sunset, and contemplating my life.
I felt like the will of God had grabbed me like the tide and drug me out into a sea of possibility, and I thought I was going to drown in it. I wished for anything that God would take away all my options and direct me. I felt like I had unbridled freedom to choose to swim any way I wanted, but I also didn’t know in which direction the shore lay, and so I was unable to move.
I prayed about this as I walked the sand, and God didn’t give me any direction, but the Holy Spirit did help me understand what I was feeling, and that was a great gift. That solo camping trip was formational for me, because it was another instance in which I learned to trust God even though I didn’t have all the answers. I learned to step forward without knowing exactly where my foot would fall, and I learned that freedom, or at least the kind of freedom we most often celebrate in our culture, isn’t the greatest good.
Fast forward two years, and I am spending my entire summer in Glacier National Park. Once again I find myself in a transitional period, and humorously, I’m still trying to answer the same questions I was asking as I walked Ruby Beach two years earlier.
Late that summer, my friend Jon came to visit me, and I led him on an overly ambitious backpacking expedition during which he got angry at me and didn’t want to talk to me anymore. His anger mellowed overnight, and as we were hiking out of the mountains the next day, we found ourselves discussing freedom.
You see, this was the first time Jon had been so far away from his girlfriend Bonnie for such an extended period of time, and he told me that for the first time, he really, really missed her. He said that freedom is overrated and that it’s far better to be known. When we were in Yellowstone a month ago, Jon told Patrick and I that his trip to Glacier was influential in his life because it revealed to him the depth of his feelings for Bonnie, and of course, they were married three weeks ago today.
“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
“It is for freedom that Christ has set you free.”
The Bible has a lot to say about freedom. God celebrates freedom. Christ came to proclaim freedom. Freedom is at the heart of the Gospel. However, the freedom of God is different than the freedom we shoot off fireworks to celebrate every 4th of July.
We celebrate a freedom of individuality. We are free to do what we want, when we want, how we want, and as much as we want. We are free to work to lift ourselves up and find ourselves and be anything that we want to be. We are free to go where we want and have everything our hearts desire. As Americans, we love this kind of freedom, but this is a freedom that kills, because it’s a freedom to be utterly selfish.
Biblical freedom isn’t a freedom to; it’s a freedom from and it’s a freedom for. In Christ, we are set free from sin. We are set free from death. We are set free from killing ourselves by living for ourselves because Christ died and lives for us. Just as Christ freely gave Himself for us, the freedom we have in Him is so we can live for others.
“You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another in love.”
“Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.”
In Christ, we have been given the freedom to lay ourselves down, not to lift ourselves up, and this is a freedom that gives life to everyone it touches.
We gain this freedom as we yield to Him, as we forfeit our freedom of choice in favor of His will for us. As I learned on Ruby Beach, freedom of choice isn’t really freedom at all. It’s just a good way to drown. You’re only free when you have no choice.
And as we begin to yield to this true freedom, we find that the deepest longing of our heart wasn’t to be free to do what we want; rather, we long to be known. As we lay ourselves aside and give ourselves to Him, we learn we are known more intimately than we ever thought possible. We are set free from ourselves.
And that is a freedom worth celebrating every day of the year.















