Eighty-four years since Pearl Harbor, and hardly a mention of it this year. The real definition of ‘freedom’ is passing away. If you talk about it, especially around subsequent generations, you quietly get ‘cancelled,’ as it is being called today. They may still allow you around in their presence, but you’re labeled a preacher, an agitator, a relic. In their mind when they see you, they see a walking, talking embodiment of non sequitur – illogical, unconnected, irrelevant. To be fair, it is what every generation has done to the one preceding in varying degree. But it feels like those degrees are sharper.
Freedom on its face is “anything goes.” That is such an ignorant, low-born understanding of the word. I used to think freedom was anything untethered from responsibility. Generally, the younger the population, the more this definition is in play. But when you are young, you are ignorant and foolish, and think you are enlightened and pure. Many are old and still think this way. What a disastrous combination, and disaster is the only antidote for that condition. When, at last, you realize you are no longer young, you finally understand how very little you know.
For many, their ill-understanding of freedom has ravaged their finances, their occupations, their bodies, even their sanity. I watched a group of several thousand such-minded people at an epic rock concert in 1988. Being present for the musical performances of those bands was watching Rock history happen, and it was an act of my foolish definition of freedom at the time. Once there, illicit drug and alcohol abuse, prostitution, etc., was everywhere. There were people who never made it to the concert for over-dosing, and alcohol poisoning-unpleasant pictures to look upon. There were fights getting into the concert, during the concert, people getting trampled, cut, beaten. Mauling, writhing hordes trying to reach the front of the stage caused many injuries. A few even lost their lives.
Looking back almost forty years, I am amazed at the ignorance, arrogance, and fatalism that drove that crowd. It was a microcosm of what Hell must be like. I didn’t make it all the way through the concert. Too much to drink, not enough to eat, and a little smashed up, I finished up on top of the van we rented to get there because falling asleep on the ground meant getting robbed, and possibly worse. But I can say I was at the original Monsters of Rock at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California in the summer of 1988. How very little that really means to me, anymore.
True freedom, oddly enough, comes with strings attached. It is not free. To live in true freedom there are some things you have to know and a lot you have to do. You have to know who you are. You have to know Who’s you are. You have to have experienced enough of life to realize you have to guide your desires and dreams. Not everything you want is good for you, and those things set you up for getting robbed of freedom. True freedom builds. It builds you as a person. Made in God’s image and likeness, you are His original idea. The things you accel at are His clues pointing you toward true freedom. Spending time and resources getting even better at those things is the path to true freedom in this life.
Embracing those challenging situations, those challenging people, in constant conversation with the Father, God, is how we learn about ourselves, our weak points, our strengths. It is how we grow. Failure is one of the greatest teachers. Success is not defined as reaching our goals, it is learning how to navigate the tough spots. Fail forward. Failure is ok. And quitting, for a time to regather yourself, is ok, too, as long as you quit quitting and relaunch into the fray. And keep doing it. Keep trying, failing, succeeding, keep doing it. When you come to a place your thoughts are not dominated by worry of the next challenge because you know you can handle it, you have stepped inside the borderlands of true freedom. If it sounds like a lot of work, it is. At times true freedom is excruciatingly laborious.
If you decide to screw it all, you have just held your hands out to be chained. Ignorance of how amazing you are, giving in to negative thoughts and base desires, refusing to see from a different perspective, and laziness will shackle you to depression, poverty, and nothingness. I have been there. I have lived there for a time. It is hell without the flames. If you cannot see a better time, if you have no hope, no love, no faith, you are already bound. What can possibly lift you out of that hellish place?
That you can have these thoughts, joy and sorrow, is a testimony that you were made for something more-true freedom. If you were an accident, as most of our educational institutions declare, why would you feel deep joy or sorrow? Why would you care at all, knowing that there could be a better situation, a better life? Why would you feel the loss of something? Why would you feel anything at all? There is something in you that reaches out. Something in you reaches out for something better, for meaning, for purpose. Where does that come from?
A man named Solomon, who is known as the wisest man on earth, after living a life without restraint, without morals, fulfilling every whim of his baseness, wrote these words in a summary of his experiences called the Book of Ecclesiastes:
“God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” Eccl 3.11 NLT
That something inside you that reaches out is a part of Himself that God made you with. There is forever in your heart. Get to know Him, and you have begun down the path to being who you were made to be. And I assure you, you were made for true freedom. It can only be found on this path.
The men who gave their lives during Pearl Harbor and the Second World War understood that freedom is not free. Many years of brutal fighting, many lives perishing in that fight made it possible for the world to continue on, especially the U.S., in freedom, prosperity, and purpose. In our pursuit of freedom, we will have to labor, sacrifice, and even die to the parts of ourselves that want to chain us. Would you be free?
Galatians 5.1, Ephesians 6.12, Mark 10.30
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