“You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of human masters.” (1 Corinthians 7:23)

Much as I like Kris Kristofferson, freedom’s not “just another word for nothin’ left to lose.”  It’s true, there is a freedom that is born of desperation.  There is a freedom from attachment that’s possible when your hands are completely empty, but those are not the only expressions of freedom.

One of the things I associate with freedom is agency – the freedom to choose my own way, to make my own responsible choices, even when they are tragically in error.

I suspect that people living in desperate poverty do not experience themselves as being radically free.  They are bound to expend all their energy and effort just to survive.  I doubt that allows for the freedom of self-expression or exploration.  I don’t think the poverty of being emotionally depleted makes us free either.  On the contrary, emotional emptiness often drives us with compulsions and obsessions more constraining than any slave master.

Paul tells us we were bought with a price.  We were held hostage to our own selfishness and sinfulness.  Christ has paid the ransom and released us from the shackles of our failures and selfishness that have made us strangers to ourselves and to one another and to God.  God has reached out across the gulf of our estrangement to make peace with us and to liberate us so that we might express our genuine individuality.

Having been set free, the greatest betrayal would be to surrender our hearts and minds to a person, an ideology, a nation, or a movement.  As Paul says, “do not become slaves of human masters.”  Don’t surrender your hearts and minds to human value systems based on selfishness and fear. 

You belong to God: not as property to be commanded, but as a beloved child to be nurtured and sent forth to flourish. 

You have been set free to be who you were created to be; to be fully alive.

Prayer:  Liberating God, you have set us free from all the things that bend and warp our created beauty.  Help us to recognize and to flee from the snares that would trap us in selfishness and sin.  Amen.