a richer kind of freedom August 5, 2009

Christianity is supposedly a limit to personal growth and potential because it constrains our freedom to choose our own beliefs and practices. This oversimplifies, however. Freedom cannot be defined in strictly negative terms, as the absence of confinement and constraint. In fact, in many cases, confinement and constraint is actually a means to liberation. If you have musical aptitude, you may give yourself to practice, practice, practice the piano for years. This is a restriction, a limit on your freedom. There are many other things you won’t be able to do with the time you invest in practicing…What have you done? You’ve deliberately lost your freedom to engage in somethings in order to release yourself to a richer kind of freedom to accomplish other things.

Disciplines and constraints, then, liberate us only when they fit with the reality of our nature and capacities. A fish, because it absorbs oxygen from water rather than air, is only free if it is restricted and limited to water. If we put it out on the grass, its freedom to move and even live is not enhanced, but destroyed. The fish dies if we do not honor the reality of its nature. In many areas of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions. Those that fit with the reality of our nature and the world produce greater power and scope for our abilities and a deeper joy and fulfillment. …

If we only grow intellectually, vocationally, and physically through judicious constraints–why would it not also be true for spiritual and moral growth? Instead of insisting on freedom to create spiritual reality, shouldn’t we be seeking to discover it and disciplining ourselves to live according to it?—- The Reason for God, page 45-46, Timothy Keller

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so, freedom actually comes from restriction. kind of like the law. if we didn’t have speed limits, and laws against killing people and rape, and stealing, no one would be free to walk around outside. we’d be in our houses, locking up every item and sleeping with one eye open. no one would dare drive a car lest they put themselves in grave danger. they would be gripped by fear of EVERYTHING. but we have laws, and people obey them. so by giving up some freedoms, to act irrationally, follow every lust, passion, fit of anger and greed, in turn, we are free to LIVE.

so, “What have you done? You’ve deliberately lost your freedom to engage in somethings in order to release yourself to a richer kind of freedom to accomplish other things.”

I experience a richer kind of freedom, in Christ. Do you?