Month: May 2024

Freedom

I just finished the book “Dispossessed” by Ursula K. Le Guin. It’s one of those books that make you think. It takes place in some far distant future on some far distant planet that has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years. The planet has withstood all the typical human problems, mismanaging the planet, corruption, slavery, violence, changes of government. They are now settled into a system that sounds a lot like our current way of life, but with proper management of the planet and its resources. The rich rule, the poor survive. Class systems. A great focus on material possessions. In the story, about two hundred years before, a group of social dissidents gain enough power that the local government is afraid of their influence, and so they give them permission to leave the planet and settle on the moon, which is habitable, but barely. It has water and fish and some vegetation, but not a lot. It’s a very fragile system and in order to live there everyone has to be very careful with the resources. This group of dissidents call themselves the Odonians, after their leader, Odo, and they set out to create their own utopia. This utopia is centered around anarchism.

anarchism: a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups Merriam-Webster

Their means of accomplishing this is to banish all ownership. Everything is commonly owned. People work together because in helping their community, they are helping themselves. And that is supposed to be the driving motivation to do the right thing. Their culture also helps promote this by disdaining and calling out any behavior that reeks of “propertarianism” or being an “egoist”.

There are all kinds of thoughts and ideas to dig into in this book, but one theme stood out to me, freedom. For the Odonians, freedom was being able to do whatever was best for yourself and the only way to achieve that freedom was to not be imprisoned by authorities or societal institutions directing your path or to be imprisoned by material possessions. There were no taboos for sex and no traditions supporting family units, though couples that wanted to stay together could, and parents that wanted to stay involved in their children’s lives, could, it was just not required. Work was seen as a fulfilling thing that everyone did, preferably in an area where you had obvious gifts and talents, but everyone also pitched in to help with nonglamorous jobs so that everything got done. And if someone chose to not work they could. But the people serving food could also choose to not feed those who didn’t work. And if a person behaved in a way that their peers found selfish or hurtful, the community could encourage them to move on to somewhere else. The underlying idea being that it’s our social structures and traditions and our material belongings that actually make humans not live in harmony with each other. And if you eliminate all those things, harmony will surely come.

Except, spoiler alert, we also learn that humankind is just bent to form bureaucracy and hierarchy and fall into power struggles, and it takes constant effort to remain in a “free” state.

I finished the book last night and then this morning I went to church and we sang a bunch of songs about being “free” . And that really grabbed my attention since I’d just been reading about this theme.

For a Christian, we understand that we have all been affected by the entry of sin into the world which happened in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. Sin came into the world and the end result of sin was moral decay, rot, and death. And no matter how many structures we put into place, religions, sacrifices, moralism, structured civilizations, strict laws, none of these things had the power to free us from sin and its end result of death.

Then Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth and was killed on a cross and he took the punishment for all our sins, for all mankind for all time. He abolished death. He fixed the problem and made it so we could be free from sin. But in order to enter into that freedom we have to accept the work he did on the cross, repent of our sins, and submit ourselves to his authority. We become slaves of Christ. His will be done, not ours.

Christianity is a paradox. In order to be free, we become slaves. We serve the Lord of the Universe, and that Lord, lay down all his power and sacrificed himself for us. And then Jesus said, if you want to be great in God’s kingdom, you must learn to be a servant. And then he proceeds to lead by example and serves us, his people. We live in a utopia of being loved and held by God, slowly being changed by him, but we also look forward to the true “utopia” of heaven where everything is finally made right and all sin and pain are abolished.

The difference between finding freedom in Christ and finding freedom in anarchy is that Christ actually takes care of the original sin problem that makes humans not live in harmony. Anarchy is at best a bandaid that offers a temporary solution, but it can never deal with the root problem, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

God’s Poem

 

I learned an amazing thing today at my women’s bible study. We were discussing

Ephesians 2:10:

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Did you know that the word that is translated into “workmanship” in this verse is the Greek word, poiema which is the same word that we get the word “poem” from? 

That really made me pause. I am God’s poem? That sounds so lovely. 

Back up a couple days ago and I was lying awake in bed, insomnia visiting me once again. Over the past year as God has been doing an overhaul on my thought life, I have started learning how to put my imagination to good use when I have insomnia. Instead of making up all kinds of complex stories in my head to entertain myself while I’m just lying there, I have started imagining heaven. Imagining the throne room of God, and imagining myself there. Just inside the door. Worshipping. And just basking in God’s presence. 

So, it had been a long week of sleeplessness hitting me in the middle of the night, and that night I was awake but tired and I just wanted to sleep. I went back to my imagination and I felt like a child who had gotten out of bed and wanted to go sit in their parents’ room because they couldn’t sleep. I imagined myself walking into the room where God was, and I asked, can I just sit here and watch you work until I can go back to sleep? 

And then I was really awake because I had never thought about watching God work. And while I was lying there I felt like God said yes, and then he started showing me all kinds of people that I know, and showed me how he had changed their lives. How he had taken them from broken, angry people to people who were whole and healed and loving. How he had taken families torn apart by generations of abuse and helped them to reach a place of forgiveness. He showed me how he had taken the timid and afraid and made them bold. He gave me a small glimpse of his workmanship. 

Back to my woman’s Bible study. We finished up our nine weeks study of the book of Ephesians and then we went out to eat together as a kind of celebration for finishing. While we ate our leader asked us to share how God had taken us from being dead in our sins to alive in Christ,

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—Ephesians 2:4-5

And as I listened to these beautiful women share how God had taken them from the place where their lives had been dark, broken and empty, to the place where they are now, joyful, living full lives of love, I found myself in awe as I realized I was in the presence of some of God’s poems. Beautiful, complex, nuanced, sometimes easy to understand, sometimes too complicated and mysterious for comprehension, everything a good poem should be. 

Listening to these women was just like my nighttime vision except I was seeing God’s work in the flesh. Beautiful walking poems showcasing God’s rich mercy and love and grace. And I love the idea that I too am one of God’s poem’s walking around the earth, a living testament, an in-the-flesh example of God at work. 

I am God’s poem. That makes me happy.