Inconvenient Freedom

Something triggered these thoughts last weekend as I listened to the sermon at our church about slavery or freedom. We are a fortunate people who are blessed to live in a country that values freedom. We only need to look at the news each night to find

Gustave Boulanger's painting The Slave Market.

evidence that across the world that isn’t so. With that truth as a backdrop, we Americans have a perspective about freedom that many around the world do not. Yet, in spite of the stark differences between humans that are found across the world and across time (as sketched out in the account of the Hebrews moving from slavery to freedom as they crossed the Red Sea), we all seem to suffer from the same problem – the allure of slavery. As a matter of fact, freedom can be extremely inconvenient. Particularly when we desire order and predictability in our lives. Let’s examine for a minute the “benefits” of slavery. I know, it sounds a little crazy (which it is as our own unique form of insanity), but from one particular perspective there are indeed benefits of slavery.

Slavery offers a number of things that freedom simply does not. Among them are the prospects of predictability and control. We often read the account of the Hebrew odyssey through the desert and wonder how the Hebrews would ever have wished for the slavery of Egypt. Yet, they voiced it time and again on this journey. They groused about their food, the conditions of the journey, the water they had or didn’t have to such a degree that Moses cried out to God regarding them (Ex. 17:4), and got incredibly exasperated with them. It seemed that every time they got disgruntled or irritated with their circumstances, they wished for Egypt. It is important to remember though the picture of the grinding poverty and harsh labor they experienced in Egypt, and yet they wished for it and the slavery they were caught in for 400 years. Yet, there is one thing that is enticing about slavery to us and to them. It is predictable and the “rules of engagement” are always known. There is the master, and there is the slave. The slave’s desires are always secondary to the master’s. If you did something wrong there was always harsh punishment, sometimes even death. In spite of the cruelty of it all, it was always the same; always predictable.

Another aspect of slavery is that your environment was always controlled for you. In essence, someone was always making decisions for you. Your life wasn’t your own, and neither was the decisions you made about yourself. So to some degree, there is a certain amount of perverse security in that because he who makes the decisions has the responsibility. Therefore, being a slave was relatively simple, straightforward, and free of responsibility outside of what you had to do for your master. If you were lucky enough to have a reasonably kind master, you were assured safety, food and water, and protection of his household. Think for a minute about the story of Joseph. He greatly benefited from being in his master’s house — he had the security he didn’t have as he was traveling with the slave traders, he had protection, a steady diet, and eventually was seen so positively by his master that he managed his entire household. Now, granted, the one thing his masters couldn’t control was how he thought or how he framed his world and circumstances, and because of this he rose in honor in the eyes of those who met him. At the same time, there were always limits to what he could do — he was still a slave.

So, given the above ideas, why is it that freedom is so inconvenient? Just do a comparison between the controlled and predictable environment of slavery, and the unpredictable, sometimes chaotic, and uncontrolled conditions of freedom. Suddenly freedom doesn’t look so “cool.” Let me illustrate further. Take decision-making for example. Under slavery, there is little decisions to be made. Whatever to which you are enslaved makes the decisions for you. Therefore, there isn’t a risk of doing something right or wrong. On the other hand, freedom allows you to choose, and of course with that choice, the risk of doing it wrong with the consequences that come with that choice. So, for those who never want to experience disappointment with themselves or anyone else for that matter, slavery is to be preferred since you don’t have any decisions to make and therefore, can’t be or do anything wrong.

Another less obvious consequence of freedom that makes is so inconvenient is the specter of trust. When I’m free I have to make choices, and I have a decision to make about who to trust in making such decisions. For most, the only people to trust is ourselves since placing the outcome into anyone else’s hands seems foolish. The alternative, of course, is the same for us as it was for the Hebrews — trusting God and His provisions for us. Of course, the ultimate choice here is between trust or control. As I have said in other blog entries, control and trust do not play well together. Either I control my environment including choosing enslavement, or I live a life of freedom which God risked giving me, and learning the intimacy and power of trust. Now, don’t get me wrong. “learning the intimacy and and power of trust” doesn’t translate into rainbows and butterflies for the rest of our lives. This development of intimate trust didn’t turn out that way for the ancient Hebrews, and it doesn’t for us.

But, I guess the big question of the day is: which would you prefer? Slavery or freedom? Before you answer that question, though, I would challenge each of us to examine our behavior first and then answer. One philosopher once remarked that if you want to know a man’s philosophy of life just watch his conduct. Our behavior and how we conduct our relationships with people tell all too clearly which we prefer. It is the ageless struggle of being human. For many, including me at various points in my life, I have much preferred the relative safety of my enslavement (the negative consequences of this enslavement were only a minor technicality in trade for my safety) than the riskiness of freedom. What are you choosing? Freedom and trust, or slavery and control?