True Freedom

True freedom is freedom to be one’s true self, as God made us and meant us to be. The freedom of every creature is limited by its own created nature. Take as an obvious example a fish. God created fish to live and thrive in water. Their gills are adapted to absorb oxygen from water. They find their freedom to be themselves within the element in which a fish finds its fishiness, its identity, its freedom. Mind you, water imposes a limitation upon fish, but in that limitation is liberty. Its freedom is to be itself within the limits which the Creator has imposed upon it.

Supposing you have at home one of those old-fashioned, probably Victorian, spherical goldfish bowls. And supposing your little goldfish swims round and round its blessed bowl until it finds its frustration unbearable, and it determines to make a bid for freedom by leaping out of its bowl. If it should somehow manage to land in a pond in your garden, it would increase its freedom. It is still in water, but there is more water to swim in. but if instead it were to land on concrete or carpet, its bid for freedom would spell death. Fish can find their freedom only within the element for which they have been created.

We come now to human beings. If fish were made for water, what were human beings made for? The biblical answer surely is that if fish were made for water, human beings were made for love, for loving God and loving our neighbour. Love is the element in which humans find their distinctive humanness. A soul lives when it loves, not when it exists. An authentically human existence is impossible without love.

This brings us to a startling human paradox. Let me state it simply like this: true freedom is freedom to be my true self, as God made me and meant me to be. But God made me for loving, and loving is giving, self-giving. Therefore to be myself, I have to deny myself, and give myself in love for God and others. In order to be free, I have to serve. In order to live, I have to die to my own self-centeredness. In order to find myself, I have to lose myself in loving. I have read somewhere that Michelangelo put it beautifully in these words: “When I am yours, then at last I am completely myself.” For I am not myself until I am yours.

So freedom is the exact opposite of what most people think it is.

I wanna share this with you all, often times we find ourselves in a quest for OUR freedom, but in doing so, we miss out on our TRUE freedom.

This was taken from John Stott’s book, “Why I am a Christian”.

God bless =)