Chapter 3 – Freedom or Love?

This chapter compares and contrasts two competing images of God – ‘the God of pure will (or freedom) and the God of pure love (or goodness).’

In each case, we either become like, or rebel against, the God we believe.

Your highest moral value

How do you handle moral dilemmas?  Do you choose freedom, or love?

When freedom reigns: a critique

In today’s culture, personal autonomy is regarded as the highest good.

Freedom in Christ, however, is freedom from self-will.

How do we react when our personal freedom, or that of our country, is threatened?  Many Christians believe that using torture against suspected terrorists may sometimes be justified.

Christ, on the other hand, taught us to love our enemies.

If freedom-as-self-will stands as our highest value, Christians may support violence under certain circumstances.  That kind of  freedom requires that the freedom and rights of others may be sacrificed.  Yet the pursuit of such freedom may also lead to paralysing fear.

‘Freedom has popularly come to mean being what I want, getting what I want and doing what I want. I am captain of my ship—I set my course accord- ing to my desires.’

But this is not the freedom for which Christ has set us free (Gal 5:1; 2 Cor 3:7).  Such freedom is not an end in itself, but the by-product of living God’s way.

‘Take a typical line from any presidential address (Republican or Democrat): “Nobody gets to write your destiny but you. Your future is in your hands. Your life is what you make of it. And nothing—absolutely nothing— is beyond your reach.“ Such lofty language recalls the story of the tower of Babel in Genesis 11, where a people who sought to “make ourselves a name” soon found that pride comes before a fall.’

And this is what we teach our children, too.

Such ‘freedom’ is, however, not only a form of idolatry; it is also a form of slavery.

When love reigns: the cross

‘What happens when love reigns? Could God’s love for us somehow make loving God (worship), loving one another (fellowship), loving our neighbor (compassion) and loving our enemy (forgiveness) our highest moral vision?’

It may seem counter-intuitive to think that our true happiness and fulfilment lie here.  But consider the words of Jesus: ‘For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it’ (Lk 9:23-25; cf. Jn 12:24-26).

It is clear enough that marriages flourish where ‘where mutual, self-giving love—not self-willing freedom—takes the lead’, and it is so across the broad span of our lives.  It is true in parenting: ‘Freedom can “make babies,” but only love raises them!’

As in marriage and parenting, so in all of life: the God of love can fill and transform our hearts so that love becomes our ‘prime directive’, our ‘absolute moral imperative’.

And, then, true freedom follows.

‘Love-sponsored freedom sacrificially serves one’s siblings-in-Christ, extends mercy to the needy, and lays down its life in the cause of justice…Christlike love is willing, not willful. Consensual, not coercive. Faithful, not forceful.‘

Such love lays down its rights, sacrifices its will, in surrender to the will of God (Mt 26:42).

Christ’s love is the model for our own (1 Jn 3:16; Mk 12:31; Mt 5:44).

‘For disciples of the Lamb, laying down our lives means laying down the sword of coercion and lethal force, and picking up the Cross of self-giving, radically forgiving love.’

*****

There is much in this chapter that is both admirable and challenging.

It is essentially, a sermon about turning from self-service and self-determination towards a Christlike love and service of others.

The author is careful to define what he means by ‘freedom’ and ‘love’ in this context.  ‘Freedom’ is unChristlike when it becomes freedom to do as I please.  Christlike love comes first, and Christlike freedom will follow.

Jersak might have quoted the old hymn: ‘Make me a captive, Lord/Then shall I be free.’

Two questions are left dangling in my mind after reading this chapter: firstly, is Jersak willing to agree that there are some important differences between personal ethics and social ethics?  Secondly (and similarly) is he willing to concede that part of the reason we are forbidden to exercise personal vengeance is that God himself will, in the end, deal justly and wisely with all wrong-doers?