The Price of Freedom

Freedom is something which we value greatly. It is something which we feel is worth holding onto and even fighting to the death for. But freedom is not simply being able to do whatever we want.

St. Paul talks about his freedom in 1 Corinthians 6 . As a Jew, and a strict Jew, he would have been subject to numerous rules and regulations. His conversion to Christianity freed him from these endless laws and so he says - all things are lawful to him now, he no longer needs to feel bound by the old system of strict rules which had come to have no real grounding for many people.

But, he says, whilst he is free from these strictures, he is not living in a free-fall situation. In this new world which he inhabits where he lives for Christ, everything he does is a reflection of who he is in Christ and he must be both the best he can be and also make the best sense of the world around him to those who will see his life as a witness.

Making best sense of the world around us is still a hard journey. Can we do all sorts of things - yes of course - but should we? We live with and around other people and how does our behavior reflect on our claim of a universal and loving God?

God loves you - we want to tell people - and we are free to earn our living and spend our money in whatever way we choose. We can spend or save, we can insure or not insure, we can drive or walk. But every one of those actions and choices to action has a consequence in terms of our self-definition and, by default, in our admission of who Christ is to us.

I am sure St. Paul sometimes drove himself into holes over some the the decisions which he was making from day to day - and this is not a call to morbid introspection. It is a call to take seriously those words of Jesus that whatever we do for the least of these - we do for Him.

Yes- we are free to choose whether to help others, whether to protect the week and vulnerable. Yes many people have deep suspicion of societal action - of communal sentiment - but as a Church, as a movement of Christ - what is the right way forward? Where is our responsibility in the day to day. How should we spend our money and live our lives.

Paul's example from the world of sexual morality seems fairly clear but to us, in our culture - but then he goes on to talk about food offered to idols. It will not harm him, he says, but he will avoid it to prevent anyone from thinking that he is having anything to do with the Roman cults of the day.

What are the idols of our society - money, self-reliance and perhaps even democracy itself is threatened by a sort of idolatry which holds up an ideal in a world which is often far from hearing anything like the voices of those who find themselves disadvantaged in some way. And what, if this is true, what food do we eat? We, after all, enjoy the spoils of a rich nation. We all claim to be able to look after ourselves and we all believe that basically things are fair and equitable - right? Or do we? Do we know that there are spoils we really should not be taking - that there are things which mar the image of Christ in us.

Freedom is not only the ability to choose, perhaps even more it is the ability to refuse. We are not so tightly defined that we have to follow blindly - we can say no - no to the food which will poison our message - yes to Jesus, and yes to a freedom which cuts our tethers and yet ties us in more closely with those around us.