“Living Life Mired in ‘Freedom’”

“Living Life Mired in ‘Freedom’”

The notion under discussion is the veracity and benefit of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures in general and in particular do they give or restrict freedom?

The matter of Christianity hangs upon one question and one question alone.  Are the Judeo-Christian Scriptures reliable?  Consider but one existential, well subjective response.

The reality is that no book has undergone such criticism and scrutiny as has the Bible.  Yet over and over again, the critic who seeks to destroy the reliability of the Scriptures in fact ends up disproving his own supposition.  Perhaps the best known is C. S. Lewis.

What most honest inquirers discover is that when one passes through the barriers of culture, language, and time and thus travels back through history to the time of the writing of the Scriptures, many of the objections as to the reliability of the Bible are set to rest.  Archeology has contributed and daily contributes significantly more to these studies.  The miraculous beauty of the Book is that its truths transcend such barriers as mentioned.

The problem lies not in the reliability of the text but in the attitude brought to the results of such inquiry as is made. The underlying issue prevalent in Western culture has nothing to do with the reliability of the Bible and everything to do with the notion that one can construct one’s own truth paradigm without the benefit of any outside agency.  The attendant mantra goes something like, “I am free to believe as I will and I will believe as I choose.”

In terms of the Gospels, Augustine observed the outcome for such a person who claims that freedom is this.  “If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”

Said in another fashion, one becomes a law unto oneself and in doing so seeks to throw off the shackles of authority.  Such a “throw off” does not have a terminus point but extends ever concentrically outward encompassing other divinely established authorities.  Ironically such a person perceives himself as living outside of restrictions when in fact he is bound by the very freedom he proclaims. 

Hobart Mauer, Harvard Professor of Psychology, observed, “In becoming amoral, ethically neutral and free we have cut the very roots of our being, lost our deepest sense of selfhood and identity.  And with neurotics themselves, now find ourselves asking, "Who am I? What is my deepest destiny? And what does living really mean?"

One might expect such a comment from a Christian or at least a person of faith but this is from an atheist and a skeptic.  As the individual and as western culture has become inculcated with such “Me-isms” it searches for more and more freedom only to finds itself mired deeper and deeper in such questions as Professor Mauer asked.  The self become the religion of choice but in reality is a strong and insatiable master demanding ever more. 

The outcome evident today is as the English music journalist, biographer and poet Steve Turner said when he wrote and following is but a part of his observaiton,

“We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him. Reality will adapt accordingly. The universe will readjust. History will alter. We believe that there is no absolute truth excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.

“We believe in the rejection of creeds, And the flowering of individual thought.

“If chance be the Father of all flesh, disaster is his rainbow in the sky and when you hear

State of Emergency! Sniper Kills Ten! Troops on Rampage! Whites go Looting! Bomb Blasts School! It is but the sound of man worshiping his maker.

The individual proclaiming freedom from the Word of God and the God of the Word can only plunge ever deeper and deeper into the very bondage the mentioned, "...there is no absolute truth excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth."  In such a plunge he becomes ensnared in the very bondage he decries.  Yet those who embrace and plunge ever deeper into the Word of God and the God of the Word though perceived by the skeptic to be in bondage in reality find ever more freedom.  

Where there to be no other evidence, existential and even subjective, that demonstrates the veracity of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures--the genuine freedom found in Christ, amply demonstrates such to be worth considering.  In fact, it is the skeptic who is profoundly mired in his "Me-ism" that refuses to see how very bound is his view and life.  It is he who fails to see how very free is the one who names Jesus as Lord.