I've been thinking about freedom today. The Bible says, "It is for freedom that Christ set you free." It's a stirring sentiment. But what does it mean?
In counseling, I've been practicing something called the "Emotional Freedom Technique." I like a couple of things about EFT. The first is that it immediately (usually!) reduces the intensity of negative emotions. It takes the "ouch" out of a situation, allowing me to be less reactive, less angry, less "stuck."
The other thing I really like is that it enables me to take a situation and isolate the individual feelings/triggers and deal with them one at a time, rather than trying to handle them all at once. I sort of liken it to swatting flies: with one, you take your time, follow it, and nail it. With a whole swarm, you swat around blindly and generally end up hitting yourself in the face without killing a single fly.
What does all this have to do with "freedom"?
At the end of counseling today I realized that what I wanted more than anything was to be free from the particular issues we were discussing. The thing that surprised me was that the freedom I thought about was multi-faceted. I didn't just want to be free of the immediate pain, I wanted to be free of seeing myself in relationship to the situation at all. I wanted to be able to make choices without reacting to it, either positively or negatively.
I wanted to view it as fact, but to have no visceral response, to have no sense of regret or waste or stupidity or just plain bad judgement. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life--the rest of the day--being defined by it. I wanted to embody Paul's words: "Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead . . . "
Whole treatises can be written on the freedom we have in Christ. Freedom from sin. Freedom from punishment. Freedom from death. From guilt.
Then there are the freedom "to's": freedom to be in relationship with God, to be holy, to obey, to be filled with the Spirit and His gifts, to serve others, to be an ambassador for Christ, to love, to forgive.
I was reminded today in a fresh and new way that it is God who has set me free . . . spiritually, relationally, emotionally, physically. The work is done. It's time for me to get with the program and embrace it.
His work is Freedom. For me. For my kids. For you.
"He whom the Son sets free is free indeed!"
Part 1 of 2
ReplyDeleteRemember also “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” Reflection on our failures and faithlessness, and His faithful work to “give us a heart of wisdom” to see our failures clearly in suffering so as to loathe folly (I Pet 4:1, Psa 38:5) are an essential part of freedom. We are to remember This is why the saints sing the Song of Moses (Deut 32, Rev 15:3) in the coming victory of Christ's return. Psalms 105-107 and the penitential Psalms (6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 143) are all part of the freedom Christ gifts us with.
It is therefore worth pondering how we, respectively, stumbled into relationship with a destructive and wayward person. I have to say that nothing in my experience in church or education prepared me to tackle the true scope of "lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." Protestant churches, in particular, are fixated on venial sin, which, though certainly obvious and challenging, is not a deadly sin, and is far less destructive than pride or acedia/despondency.
When we query carefully, we find we can lust for relationship by desponding in loneliness; we can lust for external markers in another person which we think will make them a good spouse or at least impress others; we can lust for so many things other than physical pleasure, so that venial sin becomes a mere accessory to far greater sins.
My own lust was for an educated "Christian" woman, an oddly eclectic concoction of criteria which I now know was formed by invasive ideas that were not my own, but were perceived (and unclarified) expectations from my family and peers.
Oddly, I always had in the back of my mind Austin's Darcy and Elizabeth, whom I did not understand half as well as I thought I did. I now realize Austin was emphasizing three critical Scriptural precepts in Pride and Prejudice: the testimony of two or three witnesses, "know them by their fruit," and "conduct a careful inquiry." Austin had Wisdom beyond my acumen, until I was driven to Wisdom by suffering.
I married a pastor's daughter who was an ivy league university student in Korea. Moreover, she was trilingual and a country girl. I esteemed her on these external markers projecting an idolatrous aura on her without seeing her heart by fruit which was clearly evident. I not only saw the warning signs of vitriolic contempt in sudden outbursts of violently sullen pouting, but I had been warned in a frightening dream about a viper fastening itself to my hand only a few months before I met her.
A great part of my folly was desponding in loneliness when uprooted to a foreign land, without established social moorings. My hubris in viewing myself as independent, without taking humble inventory of "it is not good for man to be alone," caused me to cave in much faster than you did.
All of her "assets" proved terrible weapons: her intellect incisively dismantling me, her religious background moralistically envenoming me for trifles while justifying her cruelty, and her language a means of concealing deceit. Her deceit, rationalized by contempt for me, includes very probable adultery and hiding 1/4 of her earnings despite my own faithful deposit of all my income in the common account. She has repaid me evil for good, and God has justly repaid me hard discipline for my folly (Mic 7:9).
She wasn't that pretty, and libido wasn't in the equation until I made willful choices to project on her what she was not. The folly of "awakening love before it desires" was almost entirely a matter of will and pride, reinforced by criteria approved by this syncretistic church culture, which views Christ and the world according to the flesh (II Cor 5:16), substituting worldly values for the deeply beautiful and precious justice of God: that beautiful responsiveness which loves and esteems rightly in the depths of Wisdom, and understands the law as the guardian of the Wellspring of Life. What folly to substitute a mere facade of moralism and spiritual achievement for that great treasury of wisdom and knowledge in Christ...
Part 2 of 2
ReplyDeleteThus did I pursue the "way that seems right to a man," reinforced by civilized "church" values.
The end thereof has been, as it has been for you, death.
One of the safeguards that I bypassed was my own mother, whose wisdom/intuition still baffles me, because far deeper than the intellectual/categorical. She eventually told me the woman I married had flagrant contempt for me.
I have always been an agile learner with a good memory, had a good sense of logic, and cultivated an intensive background in Scripture and philosophy, able to trace the very roots of thinking. All of that became a liability because of my hubris in ignoring the humbler, deeper wisdom of my mom.
I wonder that you do not investigate beyond the externals: flirtation and external markers seem to have moved you along in your relationship without questioning more deeply who Nick was. Do you not question the thoughts that were circulating in your head? your will? your pride? the perceived expectations of others? Have you asked your parents or siblings for their own observations? Surely they were outside the Princess' Bride romance which you would be prone to projecting onto your relationship with "Mr. charming."
It's no good trying to convince yourself that what happened was unavoidable and undetectable. This has led you to the despair of thinking the mutual fountain of life in Proverbs 5 is unattainable, so that you resist the counsel and promises of Scripture.
Nothing you did caused Nick to do what he did, nor do you lack the deep beauty to unceasingly captivate and retain a man who abides in Wisdom, and has eyes to see and a heart to cherish true beauty. Nick's fruit was born out of his own dark heart's pursuit of folly and futility. He is shriveled and hardened chaff driven by the wind.
Yet somehow you joined yourself to a viper, and you would do well to ask what led you to make that decision. As you already acknowledge, God's "why" was to drive you to Himself, yet part of Him "gathering the sheep in His arms" is us gaining an understanding of our own folly and fleeing for refuge to God's Wisdom, Who really does teach us. Take cue, as I have, from the Prophet Micah (chap 7:5, 10), whose own experience and folly equals yours and mine. We are of like flesh and blood to him, and can take comfort in such good company.
“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”