What is freedom?

It's Freedom Day! Today it's been exactly fifteen years since South Africa held its first non-racial, democratic elections. Fifteen years since God worked a miracle of peace and reconciliation in this land that even atheists were unable to deny. All of which makes me feel bad that I've celebrated this public holiday like most students have: catching up on work. But the day hasn't slipped by completely unobserved; I've been thinking a lot lately about freedom, and what this inspiring but slippery word really means today.

At the moment, the most obvious meaning of freedom seems to be the one exercised on Wednesday last week, when millions of us again went to the polls to elect a new government. I was amazed at the high turnout these elections received: I ended up jumping between three different polling stations because of the length of the queues. It's really great that people were so enthusiastic to participate in democracy. They were using their freedom to choose which party they would like to govern them.

The Bible also talks a lot about freedom. A verse which I have meditated on a lot in the past couple of months says "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." (John 8:36). In other words, if Jesus sets you free, you are absolutely free. That implies that true freedom is the freedom that Jesus gives. A while ago I wrote a letter to The Oppidan Press, a local campus newspaper, and closed it by saying: "I urge you to take a good long look at the people around you and find out who the really free ones are. You may be surprised at what you find." Yes, Christians are the ones who are truly free. But why doesn't the world usually see it that way? We're more likely to be labelled "legalistic" or "rule-bound" than "free". In fact, I've got a non-Christian friend who regularly complains at how meticulously I stick by rules. How can that possibly be?

Well, let me first say that it's often at least partly our own fault that people see us as being "unfree". Often we add spurious rules to our own lives and then live under bondage to them, and I'm talking as much about myself here as I am about anyone else. In my quiet time notes last week, Bill Domeris wrote that we can easily become slaves to the latest Christian fashion: if at the moment everyone is emphasizing fasting a particular way, or giving to the poor a particular way, or studying the Bible a particular way, we suddenly act as if you aren't a Christian if you don't do it like that. Whenever we do that, consciously or unconsciously, we are twisting the Good News, and giving the impression that our salvation is something we could earn by keeping laws. But as the Bible says, "If we could be saved by keeping the law, then there was no need for Christ to die." (Galatians 2:21).

But there's a far more important reason why the world doesn't recognize how free we are. It's that we're dead to sin, but alive in Christ. Non-Christians think that they can exercise their freedom by doing what they like, but we can see that by doing so, they are enslaving themselves to sin. Romans 6:15-18 clears it up nicely: "So since God's grace has set us free from the law, does this mean we can go on sinning? Of course not! Don't you realize that whatever you choose to obey becomes your master? You can choose sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God and receive his approval. Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you have obeyed with all your heart the new teaching God has given you. Now you are free from sin, your old master, and you have become slaves to your new master, righteousness."

So perhaps a better definition of freedom is this one, attributed to George Orwell: "Real freedom is being able to choose your own task-master." That's exactly what we do at election time, when we decide collectively who will rule over us. And it's what we do in life, too. Whatever we do, something or someone will be our master and I don't know about you, but I'd rather have our perfect, merciful and gracious God as a Master than anyone else. Now that's freedom!