Friday, March 16, 2007
Freedom Defined
Les Newsom at CGO had an awesoome post a while back
Given my fascination with the presidential candidacy of a Mormon, I am constantly contemplating why some of my Christian brethren would be so adamant about not voting for someone of a different faith. I have considered it from a practical standpoint, that we thrive because of the relgious pluralism in which we live and if we restrict that for another we restrict it for ourselves, so it always seemed to be counterintuitive.
But if Les' "huddling" response is accurate, and I think it is, the problem is that we may thrive, but we do not really practice. Let me put it this way. we call ourselves Christians, but we are the kinds of Christians that fight the fences and so we end up huddling behind the label instead of experiencing the freedom to go out there and really live.
We worry about society, but then we worry that if the changes we desire come from someone not in our huddle they will be somehow suspect. If we were true to our claimed faith, we could break the huddle.
What's more, how much easier would it be to bring people onto the playground than into the huddle? We claim to want to bring Jesus to the world, but if we huddle tightly, He is not going to have much reach.
The consequences of the freedom provided by deep, transforming, and obedient faith are much farther reachng that the purely personal.
Related Tags: freedom, faith, huddle, fences, voting, evangelism
Imagine a fish who one day decides that the real source of his problems in life is not his family, not his “school,” not his friends…but water. “Water,” he assumes, “is so restrictive, so limiting. It’s time to start to think outside of the box.” What he wants is a new life, free from the mundane and the usual. So to that end, he decides one day that he’ll leave the confines of the water for the happier shores (literally) of dry land where there is warm sun and beautiful beaches, but most exciting of all…air! Forthwith, he throws himself out of the water and onto the ground. But it doesn’t take long before he realizes that the “warm sun” is hot and burning. The beautiful beach is scratchy and rakes across his scales. And the first big gulp of air he tries to take chokes him. Freedom from water is not so freeing after all.The freedom available by living inside God's boundaries is a common meme among Christians, but Les' illustrations here rasie the question to a level I had not previously considered. That "huddling together in a tiny clump" response is, I think, extremely instructive where politics and religion intersect.
[...]
...a Pennsylvania public school system that had a large playground on one end of its property. Over the years, the neighborhood grew up around the school and the streets bordering the playground became busy and full of traffic. Fearing an accident, school administrators put up a large fence all the way around the playground.
Well, parents were deeply offended. It looked like their children were in a prison. The fight became so heated that the conflict went all the way to the city school board where it was decided that the fence would be torn down. What do you think happened the very next day? If you are thinking that a car struck a child, you’d be wrong. The children huddled together in a tiny clump in the middle of the playground, dreadfully afraid of the expanse of the playground all around them.
Do you see the point? The fence actually GAVE them the playground. What if God desperately wants to give this culture the playground? But we are so offended at fences (and screaming “Legalism!” at any sniff of them) that we either race out into dangerous traffic OR we huddle together in tiny clumps, never seeing just how much joy might actually be “out there.”
Given my fascination with the presidential candidacy of a Mormon, I am constantly contemplating why some of my Christian brethren would be so adamant about not voting for someone of a different faith. I have considered it from a practical standpoint, that we thrive because of the relgious pluralism in which we live and if we restrict that for another we restrict it for ourselves, so it always seemed to be counterintuitive.
But if Les' "huddling" response is accurate, and I think it is, the problem is that we may thrive, but we do not really practice. Let me put it this way. we call ourselves Christians, but we are the kinds of Christians that fight the fences and so we end up huddling behind the label instead of experiencing the freedom to go out there and really live.
We worry about society, but then we worry that if the changes we desire come from someone not in our huddle they will be somehow suspect. If we were true to our claimed faith, we could break the huddle.
What's more, how much easier would it be to bring people onto the playground than into the huddle? We claim to want to bring Jesus to the world, but if we huddle tightly, He is not going to have much reach.
The consequences of the freedom provided by deep, transforming, and obedient faith are much farther reachng that the purely personal.
Related Tags: freedom, faith, huddle, fences, voting, evangelism
