REALISM OR IDEALISM? FINALLY IT ALL BOILS DOWN TO THE ELUSIVE NATURE OF FREEDOM!

If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. Joh 8:36  

Freedom is a wonderful thing. It is not easy to give up when it has been acquired. But freedom is also slippery. It can get so fluid for example until one loses the sense of right or wrong – or until it has slipped into a form of very subtle bondage. The prodigal won his freedom once. But it was also his greatest ruin. Such are the complex nuances which constitute the meaning of freedom. The redemption of the children of Israel from Egypt may just be one of the nuances. The surface meaning is easy to infer. But the deeper undertones may easily pass undetected. Metaphorically it is an exercise that takes labour and hard days just to dig it up or experience it fully. It is not a fancied exercise at all, and it may even sound boring. ‘And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart’ (Jer 29:13).  ‘I intreated thy favour with my whole heart: be merciful unto me according to thy word’ (Psa 119:58).  

The prodigal’s freedom was cheaply acquired, and it deserted him just as suddenly. He had paid nothing for it, and he had no reference point or experience on how to make use of it before that. The value of hard work was lost on him. His life had never understood patience. He had just grown up in his father’s house where everything had been provided for him, including his inheritance. But that is not how God wants his people to earn their freedom! It might have been easy, and very easy indeed, to have just made his people cross over to the Promised Land from Egypt in one day. But picture what they would have lost, the whole experience of forty years! They should never have understood God’s faithfulness or power. They should never have learnt the expensive lesson of patience, of trusting God, of waiting, of the meaning of faith and of the invaluable lessons of pain and suffering. (The things God is teaching us through this Covid19 for example should probably serve us well for the next 100 years. There is almost a four hundred year period of relapse afterwards, a period of forgetting). They should’ve earned their freedom very cheaply and they should’ve lost it very shortly indeed. They should hardly have acquired the full taste of it in their mouths before it should’ve evaporated. Their children should never have had a reference point, no songs to remember by, no writings to refer to, no lives to draw strength from and no witnesses! In short they should’ve gained nothing, no history, no identity and no inheritance! And that is not the way of love. It’s sheer cruelty instead. Indeed they should’ve gone back to Egypt (and slavery) the following day! And it is the same way God behaved towards Adam. Had he given him absolute freedom without any rules Adam (and us) should’ve remained at one stage of ‘development’ all his life. And that is slavery of the worst kind! And certainly it is not the way God acts with those he loves. He cares for the end results. That is why he dwells too long on the lessons.

And so is the freedom which God gives. It is not a one day event but an eternal one. Lies have a very short shelf life, and one always pays dearly in the end for all the gifts from the devil. That was the lesson of the prodigal. For it wasn’t long before ‘he began to be in want’, and the devil’s trick always ends like that – it is usually one unending trip of wants! ‘Sir,’ cried the woman, ‘[G]ive me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw!’ The devil’s tales always begin very sweetly, very swiftly, and very big. It is hard to resist the freedom he lays out initially, very hard in fact, that few have successfully resisted him! You may be in trenches right now but hold out for a while. Don’t give place for a sweet tale just now! What you aim for is too precious to settle for anything so cheap! God’s way may be long but in the end he delivers what he promised. He doesn’t deny the desert place. He doesn’t deny the sun and the thirst and the long trek. But God never departs from his promises from the beginning up to the end. His promises are dearly purchased, that is why he wouldn’t settle for cheap.

So how does true freedom resemble like? True freedom may involve rejecting what at first seems like true freedom. True freedom may sometimes involve emptying one’s life completely of what one may have accumulated for years. Sometimes true freedom may only begin to become apparent once the room has been reduced to its barest minimum – until one even begins to suspect he is a pauper! True freedom takes great courage. Because it may involve rejecting a well-trodden path for a completely new one! And the sudden plunging into it may actually make the whole difference! So what sort of freedom would you rather have?

God is wonderful. He even gives us the freedom to reject his freedom! Who else can give a person the opportunity to reason with him like that – sometimes almost to the degree of becoming a nuisance to him - and yet he doesn’t give up! For me, that is the kind of person I wish to serve for the rest of my life! God make us hungry again for this amazing freedom and which you so expensively purchased by your own blood at Calvary. Fix our eyes permanently only on the final prize O God! - and not on our vain expediencies of realism and very short lived sparks of idealism.