And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.
To be free is something we ruggedly individualistic Americans want to be, yearn to be. We are a nation born from this desire to be free. And somehow, we’ve confined the idea of freedom to what it isn’t. We aren’t required to pay taxes to another country. We aren’t required to have a particular religion. We aren’t required to have someone else tell us when and where to gather or what to say. We are free from things. We are free from the things we thing are the greatest constraints on our true selves.
But what if the greatest thing that holds us back from our true selves isn’t an external rule or those things we bump against when we’re told No.
What if the greatest thing that holds us back from being the people God wants us to be is internal? What if it’s our own selfishness, or self-centeredness?
This is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggests, in regard to this passage. He writes that the freedom we gain from knowing and following Jesus frees me ‘to be free from myself in order to be free for others’.
It’s when we get wrapped up in our own importance, our own narrative that we cannot see others around us and we cannot care for God’s creation as we ought. He writes, “It directs my attention, bent in on myself, to what is beyond and shows me the other person. And, as it does this, I experience the love and the grace of God.” Thank you, Dietrich.
I must admit that when I’ve read this passage before, I get a vision of someone on a mountain top, delighting in their freedom from persecution, or prison, or debt. I wasn’t sure how following Jesus would make me free from debt, or illness.
This morning, I’m thinking about all of the external things I’d like to be freed from, and how much more important it is to be freed from my own misconceptions and expectations. I’m thinking about my loved one with the serious brain disorder. I would really like to have them be freed from the illness. I’d like for me to not have to take two huge pills to them twice a day, or to take them for a their painful long acting monthly shot. There’s a lot I’d like to be freed from, that is beyond me. As it turns out, my years of living with this illness and concurrent prayers haven’t made me free from any of those things.
But if I think about my self, and my thoughts, I can see that prayer and following Jesus has actually made me more free. Perhaps not entirely but more so. When our loved one is in crisis and we have unwanted contacts with the police, jail, or hospitals, those used to create a lot of angst and not a lot of sleep. Maybe we’re getting better at this, but I think it has more to do with a certain peace that comes from praying for my freedom from my unhelpful thoughts and worries.
Without even knowing it, I viscerally was experiencing what Bonhoeffer was suggesting. Following Jesus and his truth frees me. If I can feel a sense of that freedom in the midst of my loved one’s illness, I suspect I can feel it in lots of other circumstances. As long as I remember that it’s me who needs freeing.
No comments:
Post a Comment