Living in America is great. The land of the free.
If you ask one hundred Americans what is so great about this country, most of them will say that it’s our freedom. We can say what we want and we can pretty much do what we want. We can live where we want, choose the work we will do, practice our faith…………we can buy a gun………we can abort our baby. Sure there are laws to protect others from us when we abuse our freedom. But all in all…….we are in charge of our lives.
Freedom, however, is a bit slippery. We love having it, but we often don’t handle it well. To be clear, this post is not about how misusing our freedom can harm others (though it certainly can)……….this post is more about how complete freedom can harm us.
I see freedom as a continuum. Consider the chicken that laid the egg that you ate for breakfast. She will spend her entire life in a one cubic foot cage. She is safe, well fed, and well cared for. But, she will never in her life make a single choice. She is the poster child for lack of freedom. Now imagine the king of a small nation. He rules absolutely. He makes the laws. He can do anything he wants. Nothing constrains him and his appetites. He is absolutely free. Think of Idi Amin. I bet that most of us would rather live in Idi Amin’s palace than in the chicken’s cage. And yet, both Idi Amin and the chicken have a problem with freedom. There is no doubt that too little freedom is bad……but so is too much freedom. And I’m not talking about too much freedom being bad for society as a whole……… I’m talking about it being bad for me.
I spend my day making decisions. Thousands of times each day I face choices. As I face a choice, many of my options are good……..but many are bad. Absolute freedom means that all of the bad options are available to me……..in addition to the good options. And I am a master at justifying the choice of the bad option.
So are you.
Here is the rub. In order to live a happy and successful life, I need to limit my freedom. This runs against my nature…….against my skill at justifying bad choices……. against my appetites.
I need outside help. I need a set of rules to govern my behavior.
I need a moral code………..and so do you.
I need it, not to protect society from me……….but to protect me from me.
Here it is:
Love God
Love your neighbor
Don’t lie
Don’t steal
Don’t murder
Honor your parents
Sex is for husbands and wives
Don’t covet
Rest on Sunday
The Bible is full of rules. It is in fact a detailed moral code. But these 9 points are the heart of it. We tend to look at it as a book that is designed to put us in a tiny cage……to take away our freedom……..to take away our choices. And we hate that………we rebel against it. But, unlike human laws which are there to keep us from hurting others………the moral code of the Bible is there to keep us from hurting ourselves. In a word, the Bible is designed to take away our freedom to make self destructive choices. It is a gift…….from a creator who wants us to be happy and fulfilled…….no more no less.
I believe that when I fail……….when I get angry with somebody or jealous (my sins of choice)…….God is not angry with me but rather sad……..sad that I have missed out on the joy that he has planned for me…….sad that I have fallen short of my destiny.
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Jeremiah, NIV