All freedom journeys require an open mind—a mind that is
not conditioned by past knowledge and experience, but open to possibility.
Questioning opens the doors of our imagination, enabling us to consider
alternatives to the status quo. Unless one is capable of imagining another
possible reality, one cannot free oneself from bondage.…
The compulsion to repeat the past is apparent in the
biblical myth of the Exodus. When Moses led the Israelites to freedom, they
often yearned to return to Egypt. Though they were miraculously provided for
throughout their forty years of wandering in the desert, the Israelites were
often nostalgic for the “good old (bad) days” in Egypt:.. “ They missed the
predictability and sense of control they felt in Egypt—where everything was
known. Though in actuality they were oppressed and enslaved by the Egyptians,
the Israelites looked back on their time in Egypt with nostalgia because they
could not bear the uncertainty they faced as a free people.
Estelle
Frankel
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm,
therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Paul
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We seem to love the prisons we have created for ourselves
Even the tombs we have dug ourselves.
We prefer confinement to freedom
Safety to possibility
We do not trust the One who sets us free
But instead turn again and again to what enslaves us
The God (s) of our own making
Our God (s) are “that about which we are ultimately
concerned” (Tillich)
We need only look at the systems we created
Economic, social, and political
To understand which ruler we have chosen.
The center of our worship is no longer the church or
cathedral
We bow down in front of the corporate monument
We prostrate ourselves before gilded palaces and
magnificent ballrooms
And whose image glares down at us
From the façade?
We may believe in God
But what gods shape our lives and determine our
priorities
We are called by One who would set us free
Into uncertainty
We are called to let go of so much
The myth of exceptionalism
Or belief that progress is inevitable
The delusion that we can have it all
An ever-expanding economy
Universal prosperity
Healthy bodies
A healthy planet
We are called forward by a God who wants to lead us
To a new heaven and a new earth
But we are slaves
That is who we are
Slaves to an illusory past (that never really existed)
Slaves to the way of domination
Where might makes right a peace comes through coercion
Slaves to a belief that life is all about
Winners and losers
And that the one who dies with the most cryptocurrency
Wins
Our slavery is revealed
In the abuse of immigrants
The destruction of the planet
The worship of America, the global bully, yay!
The avoidance of uncomfortable truths
The retreats (thanks, Team USA) into misogyny
The acceptance of the unacceptable, our protection of
abusers
The wilderness is scary
Leaving slavery is harder than we believed
But somewhere out there
In a future we can’t understand
Somewhere out there
Amidst the rocks and thorns
And an infinite horizon
There are streams of living water
and the freedom
to live as children of God
to be loved
and to love
