Taking the "dumb" out of freedom
Why your freedom is my freedom, too
Back about eleven or so years ago, when I was the associate pastor at Garden of Grace UCC in Columbia, SC, we broke ground for the building where the congregation still meets. It was a festive occasion, standing out in the woods with shovels and big dreams for what was to come for our little community.
Our big day was also attended by a couple of protestors who brought signs and bullhorns and proceeded to loudly proclaim that our church would home to such human derelicts as faggots, dykes and other filthy sinners who were worthy only of God's wrath. We called the police, who never showed up, and continued with our ceremony as best we could amid the racket.
Afterward, we all made our way back to our cars and our tormentors were still there, still spewing their judgment and hatred. One member turned around to argue with them and we hustled her to her car. After seeing that everyone else was safely driving away, I headed back to my car, and there between me and vehicular safety were these two men – one an older, bedraggled fellow and the other, a younger man who, if he hadn't been carrying a God Hates Fags sign could have passed for a crunchy granola type new age dude with his long hair and Birkenstocks.
I wore a collar back then, so these protestors knew I was one of the pastors of this abhorrent church. I assessed the situation and decided that kindness would be my strategy. As I strolled passed them, I smiled and said, "God bless you." Well, you'd think I had poured hot water on them or said something awful about their mommas. They began to shout at me. The older one yelled, "You're a false prophet, ma'am. You're leading your people to hell!"
I'm sure the other guy said something, too, but I found the older man's comment so funny, I didn't hear him. Only in the South will you encounter such polite hatred. Where else will protestors call you "false prophet" and "ma'am" in the same sentence? I shook my head and continued to my car without another word to them.
It was in that moment that I understood, maybe just a little bit, how Jesus might have felt in the fourth chapter of Luke as he walked through that hostile hometown crowd who believed that he, too, was a false prophet, sir, bringing a strange message back to his hometown. I think what set the crowd off against Jesus was the same thing that set those protestors off against me – they couldn't handle the fact that the Holy often uses those we like to hate to bring blessings into the world, which is something Jesus often preached about.
Throughout the gospels, Jesus tells his hometown crowd stories from their own tradition where God favored hated outsiders over the chosen people Israel. In Luke 4, in particular, he reminded them how the prophet Elijah was sent to feed a widow in the hated city of Sidon while those in Israel starved and about the time that the prophet Elisha chose to heal a despised Syrian of leprosy instead of the many Hebrews similarly afflicted. Jesus was telling his hometown buds what A Course in Miracles would teach centuries later: All of the children of God are special and none of the children of God are special.
But, to drive that point home, sometimes God uses those we hate to reveal the true nature of freedom in the world. It angered Jesus' homies to think some filthy Syrian might being blessed ahead of them – and it still angers many today who say they follow Jesus to see such a thing happen to Syrians – or any group they have targeted with their hatred. It angered those protestors to think that God might actually use a lesbian pastor to bring the good news of God's love and grace into this world. But that's how God works. God is always using those we hate – blessing them and prospering them – to show us that no one is free until we are all free.
God is always showing us that our true enemy is not the person before us, but instead the collective powers and principalities that we have created in this world through our fearful egos. The hometown that Jesus goes back to, metaphysically speaking, isn't his literal, physical hometown. Instead, that hometown is his ego, and it can't handle the truth that we are all equal in the eyes of the Holy, and that the only way to be truly free is in and through one another.
Freedom's key ingredient: Love
That word freedom is a lot like the word love. We use it so much that we don't really even understand what it means anymore. I know, when I was a kid, freedom meant the ability to do what I wanted to do, whether it was stay up late, ditch church, cuss without getting my mouth washed out with soap, or drink beer. I didn't realize that freedom came with other things like jobs and mortgage payments. Oh, but that's the rub – any true form of freedom comes with responsibilities, not just for ourselves, but for others.
Church father Augustine captured this idea in one short sentence: "Love God and do as you please." Now, everyone hears that last part – "do as you please" – and we get all excited. But not many catch the first part.
"LOVE GOD ... and do as you please."
That changes the whole equation on freedom, because if I love God, my idea of what will please me also changes. Look at it this way, if the sentence for me and my partner, Beth, were: "Love Beth and do what you please," then what pleases me the most will always be what pleases her. I am certainly free to see other women, if I so choose, but it's clear I'll be doing it while owning half of my stuff. However, I love Beth first, so the thought of cheating on her doesn't please me (and not just because it would cost me half – or maybe more – of my stuff).
If we get the first part right – if we get the love part right – then we will realize that we are already truly free – free to rise above the pettiness and greed of the ego. Free to rise above the hatred and division that our corporate and individual egos have spawned on this earth. Free to rise above the fear, the anxiety and the worry that our ego insists we must constantly feel. We are free to find the rapture of freedom, but we are not free to do it alone. Freedom isn't independent of others ... it depends upon others.
"This world awaits the freedom you will give when you have recognized that you are free," A Course in Miracles tells us in Chapter 23. A little earlier, in Chapter 22, the Course, asks: "Do you want freedom of the body or of the mind?" You can't have both.
Oh, but the ego thinks you can have it all and it assures us that we'll be free when we have that next job, or that next relationship, or that next car or house or whatever else your ego desires in this world. The ego's belief may be that the one who dies with the most toys wins, but our higher, divine self knows that freedom is never found in the things, wealth or power of this world. Freedom is only found in relationship – in love of God, self and one another.
We have a choice to either be in our ego – that bodily freedom in this world of grasping for things outside of ourselves that will never make us truly free – or we can be in our right mind, in our Christ consciousness where the rapture of freedom, not just for ourselves, but for the entire world is readily available to us.
True freedom is found in being faithful to love and knowing that we can only do God's will in the world when we act from a place of love and not fear. Attacking, hating, complaining, wishing the world were another way without actually acting to change it, these are all actions based in fear. They are not the actions of a divinely, rapturously free person. Truly free people will always seek a loving way to respond, even when no love is returned, even when hatred, malice, ridicule and, yes, even injury or death is returned for that love.
Nobody said it would be easy for us in this bodily form, but for our mind and spirit freedom is easy because we understand that it can only be found in love for God and one another. This true love is just like breathing.
Explosive freedom
As I walked to my car on that tense and joyful afternoon after the groundbreaking ceremony, I felt free. Even as the hate-filled words flew at me from the protestors, I smiled. I felt light and happy. Not because I felt superior to the protestors, but because I knew that by refusing to hate them, I was accepting not just God's love for me, but for them as well. I knew that I could only truly be free by offering that same freedom to them, whether they accepted it or not.
This is the freedom Jesus knew as he walked through the crowd in his hometown that day. He was not afraid of the angry mob. He knew that, in an instant, they could have grabbed him and thrown him off a cliff, but he didn't fear them. Instead, he loved them because he knew that his freedom hinged on theirs. But, how do we know when we've gotten this love thing right? The Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 13, offers us some clues on how we will know when we're really acting in a love manner.
"Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends."
This passage is often read at wedding ceremonies because it admonishes couples to treat one another as equals in their relationship. This is what divine freedom looks like – the kind of love that bears all things and endures, without being offended or seeking revenge for perceived wrongs. Love is always willing to see the best in anyone and everyone even if that person is someone you hate – even if that person is yourself.
Love is willing to look beyond the ego's projections, beyond its pettiness and small-mindedness, beyond its self-loathing, beyond its jealousies and anxieties. Love looks so deeply at self and others that all it can behold is the light of God that shines within each of us.
When we truly behold that light within ourselves and others, we cannot remain complacent when see that anyone in this world is suffering. Once we can truly behold the innocence of all of God's creation, then the true love within us will not rest until we are all free to live fully into that higher, divine self we all possess.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran priest who was executed for standing up to Hitler during World War II, reminds us that we are never truly free by ourselves. "In truth, freedom is a relationship between two persons. Being free means 'being free for the other,' because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free."
Bonhoeffer also knew that once you realized that we can only be free through one another, you understand that life is not a spectator sport and we must be about our Holy purpose of saving this world from the fearful collective egoic powers and systems we have created together.
"The people who love," wrote Bonhoeffer, "because they are freed through the truth of God, are the most revolutionary people on earth. They are the ones who upset all values; they are the explosives in human society."
This is the call to rapturous freedom, to be the ones who upset all the values, who blow up the fearful systems and powers that our collective egos have created. We only do that when we realize that God is always sending the misfits, the outcasts, the refugees, the forgotten and the marginalized to save this world.
Those in the seats of power will ridicule us, oppose us, and yes, maybe even arrest and imprison us for our opposition. But if we truly understand our calling to save this world from the powers and principalities of ego, then we understand, like Jesus did, like Paul did, like Bonhoeffer did, that we are only free in and through one another.
When we choose to look upon everyone in this world as our Holy sibling, regardless of race, nationality, gender, political persuasion or any other barrier to love that we can construct in this world, then, as the Course tells us, "the world is given freedom." And sometimes, just maybe, that underlying current of divine love may slip out from an enemy when, in the middle of a hate-filled rant, they call you, "ma'am."
Music for the journey
“Free in You,” from the Indigo Girls 2004 release, All That We Let In
About the Motley Mystic:
The Motley Mystic is a spot for people who realize that the truth speaks with many voices. There is no one religion, philosophy, institution or dogma that captures the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth. No one needs to swear allegiance to one line of thought or belief to discern Truth, because Love is the only thing that’s real. That’s what we explore at the Motley Mystic - all the tools and strategies we need to remove our barriers to Love and live fully as our true, Divine Self.
Candace Chellew is the founder of Motley Mystic as well Jubilee! Circle, an interfaith spiritual community in Columbia, S.C. She is also the author of Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians published in 2008 by Jossey-Bass. She is also a musician and avid beer drinker.