Freeish

I went to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library in Springfield, Illinois on one of my Stops Along the Way. It blew my mind.

As I approached the entrance I followed a timeline displayed in the museum windows. The timeline traced what freedom has meant over the years for African Americans in the United States. One word grabbed my attention: freeish. Freeish means to be somewhat free, but not as free as can be. The word’s earliest known use was in 1820 in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, but freeish has come to be associated with June 19, 1865. Otherwise known as Juneteenth.

Freeish means to be somewhat free.
But not as free as can be.

The Declaration of Independence declared “all men are created equal,” but it did not declare all men to be free. That proclamation came decades later. Even then, freedom declared and proclaimed has not always been experienced by all. The best we’ve been able to accomplish is to make most people freeish.

In one of the museum’s exhibits, a long hallway ends at the figure of President Lincoln agonizing over the Emancipation Proclamation. Visitors are bombarded with a cacophony of arguments for and against the proclamation. The nation declared free almost a century before battled viciously over who should be free and how free they should be. The battle of words and limits raged while actual human beings, created in the image of God, lived enslaved.

We’re still arguing.

We shout that people go too far in their call for freedom. We yell that others don’t go far enough. We don’t seem to know how far freedom needs to go. We have a fundamental misunderstanding of freedom.

As hard as we may try, real freedom cannot be legislated. Laws are created and enforced by selfish leaders as a means of governing selfish people. We see freedom from our own perspectives, and don’t have the vision to understand freedom from anyone else’s perspective.

Freedom’s Beginning and End

“Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”.

–AN ANONYMOUS JUDGE

Freedom is relative. Your freedom ceases to be freedom when it infringes on my freedom. But my freedom cannot limit your freedom and be true freedom.

Is it possible to celebrate complete freedom for all?

As long as we depend on man-made standards we will not implement a standard of freedom that is sufficient for everyone.

Left solely to the legal system, our world will remain only freeish.

We’ll willingly fight for freedom, to a point. But our own desires and felt needs will always test our commitment to another’s freedom.

If we can’t be free, and freeish isn’t good enough, what’s the answer?

The only effective answer is Jesus.

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

JOHN 8:31-36 (ESV)

Jesus set us free from:

• sin’s penalty against us,
• sin’s power over us,
• sin’s shame within us, and eventually,
• sin’s presence with us.

Jesus saved me. He broke the chains of my selfishness. I’m no longer a slave to my desire to do whatever I want no matter how it messes with someone else’s freedom.

Jesus set us free to:

• live abundantly (John 10:10),
• love overflowingly (Eph. 3:14-19), and
• serve indefatigably (1 Peter 4:7-11, ESV).

I read God’s truth. His Word. The Bible. I live in it and it lives in me. I learn that freedom is all about loving God and loving others. Sometimes I mess up, and my natural selfishness kicks in, but God is patient and keeps working with me.

Jesus set us free:

• in his abundance,
• according to his power, and
• for his glory (Eph. 3:20-21, ESV).

I know who I am and what goes with it, so I don’t have to worry or try to take anything away from anyone else. Noses are safe from my freedom to wave my fist. I find out what it looks like to live in God’s abundance. I’m free. Truly free.

Our understanding of God’s abundance is as inadequate as our understanding of freedom. We act like there is a scarcity of what we need, and so we claim what others have and protect what we have from being taken away from us. Most of the time, our greed and fears are directed against people who are different from us. A different gender. A different color. A different status.

Jesus, Juneteenth, and me

You may think: “Come on, Christi, you’re talking about two different kinds of freedom.” Freedom in Christ is totally separate from our freedom as citizens.

Is it? My desire for all people to be truly free begins with me being free indeed. As long as I settle for being only freeish in my spiritual life, I will be okay with others being only freeish in the life they live in this world.

My desire for all people to be truly free begins with me being free indeed.

CRG

Most of the articles I read about freeish problem and Juneteenth, conclude that each of us must let freedom begin with us. We must long for freedom for others, and be willing to measure the swing of our own arms. We must seek to know the truth of where another’s nose begins.

And we need Jesus. Only he can change the desire of our hearts. Only he can turn our eyes away from what we see as scarcity and show us our abundance.

Come Alongside

Will you come alongside me in the cry for real freedom? When we see something in the news about freedom or a lack of freedom, let’s ask God to begin the change in us. Show me, God, where I am limiting someone else’s freedom because I’m protecting my own nose or a privilege I cherish. Open my eyes, Holy Spirit, to where I am exercising my own freedom at the price of someone else’s good (or their nose). Teach us your truth, Jesus, and set us free indeed.

Traveling in Grace,

Christi