Friday, 3 April 2020
Scripture:
“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)
Dear Friends,
I subscribe to several daily reflection resources, each of which has appeal for different reasons. One of my consistent favorites is Frederick Buechner’s “Quote of the Day” (see: https://www.frederickbuechner.com).
We’ve got many weeks yet to live through under the current conditions, and I don’t know about you, but there are ways in which I sometimes feel trapped. When that happens, it tends to indicate a need for me to reframe my experience, especially as a Christian whose faith is rooted in a deep experience of liberation. So, his post on “Escapism” seemed on point. I hope you enjoy it, as well!
| Escapism |
| RELIGION HAS OFTEN BEEN DENOUNCED as escapism, and it often is. To deny the prevalence of pain in the world and the perennial popularity of evil. To abdicate responsibility for them by assuming that God will take care of them very nicely on his own. To accept them as divine judgment upon the sins especially of other people. To dismiss them or to encourage others to dismiss them by stressing the promise of pie in the sky. To pretend like a Forest Lawn cosmetologist that there’s no such thing as death. To maintain your faith by refusing to face any nasty fact that threatens it. These are all ways of escaping reality through religion and should be denounced right along with such other modes of escape as liquor, drugs, TV, or any simplistic optimism such as jingoism, right-wing evangelicalism, moralism, idealism, and so on, which assume that if everybody would only see it our way, evil would vanish and all would be sweetness and light.
But the desire to escape is not always something to be denounced, as any prisoner or slave could tell you. Jesus said, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:31-32). Free from sin, he explained when they pressed him. Free from imprisonment within the narrow walls of your own not all that enlightened self-interest. Free from enslavement to your own shabbiest instincts, deceits, and self-deceptions. Freedom not from responsibility, but for it. Escape not from reality, but into it. The best moments we any of us have as human beings are those moments when for a little while it is possible to escape the squirrel cage of being me into the landscape of being us. -Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words |
Prayer: Lord of liberation, help me to feel the encompassing fullness of your embrace so that I might feel fully freed to be who you’ve created me to be, and do what you need me to do. Amen.
Music (click on the title): “Make Me A Captive, Lord”
(Those of you who were once Methodists will probably recognize this one!)