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Neither birds in cages nor those with broken wings are free to fly. Nor will removing the cage of a bird with broken wings bring it its desired freedom; the wounded bird will be left an easy prey for its foes. 

-Westerholm, Understanding Paul

“Think outside the box.” “Free to explore.” “Dreams soar on the wings of imagination.” Etc. Much of the rhetoric of our society emphasizes the individual. I have even heard an instructor talk about the effectiveness of letting kids pick their own rules for the classroom (but steering how the kids make their “own” rules).

Hence, it’s not surprising that among the common objections to Christianity is the notion that it is restricting. 

To this sentiment I have found a refreshing response by Stephen Westerholm in his book, Understanding Paul.

We do not live in a value-neutral world where we are free to decide what is best for ourselves. The world – by divine wisdom – has been given an order that is good, promoting our life and well-being. Human freedom amounts to the power people have to choose their response to the divinely created order. We can respect and celebrate and live in harmony with it by being… reverent toward God: a course of life that is “righteous” and “wise”…Or we can refuse to recognize any good that we ourselves do not define and that does not have us as its focus – thus defying the order in which we cannot help but live.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction. -Proverbs 1:7

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One Response

  1. John

    True Freedom begins when you are free of the fear of death. Until such time every fraction of your body-mind-complex is saturated with a hell-deep fear and trembling, of death.

    To be identified with the body is to be identified with fear. Because just below our normal social personality we KNOW that the body is going to die sooner or later, and maybe even before the next breathe.

    The fundamental essence of Freedom in five points.

    1. You are NOT the one who wakes, or dreams, or sleeps.

    2. You ARE the actionless and formless Mere Witness of the three common states of waking, dreaming and sleeping, and of all the apparent contents and experiences associated with the three common states of waking, and of dreaming, and of sleeping.

    3. You are NOT the body, or the doer of action, or the doer of even ANY of the body’s actions of functions.

    4. You are NOT the mind, or the thinker, or the doer of even ANY of the actions or functions of mind or of body-mind.

    5. No matter what arises, whether as or in the state of waking, or of dreaming, or of sleeping, you ARE the actionless, and formless, and thought-free Mere Witness of attention itself, and of every apparent “object” of attention, and of any and every state of “experience”, and of the entirety of whatever and ALL that arises.

    First transcend the mind, not the body.
    Inwardness, and all thinking, is flight from Life and Love.
    Only the body is Full of Consciousness.

    Surrender the mind into Love, until the body dissolves in Light.
    Dare this Ecstasy, and never be made thoughtful by birth
    and experience and death.