Chaplain's Corner

A few months ago, my wife, a therapist, asked that I help her out by manning her reception desk as her receptionist was off with the flu.  The first evening I took my own book, Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution by Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey & Andrew Sach and was able to finish a read I’d been working on for 6 months.  It was a difficult but important book written about the Atonement, quite theological, but given the divergent ideas that are in vogue surrounding the Atonement, a profitable and grounding endeavor.  However the second evening, I went straight from work to her office and forgot to take some reading material.  One of the other therapists in the office allowed me to raid her book shelf and I chose a book titled The Gift of Therapy by Irwin D. Yalom.  Dr. Yalom is a psychiatrist who worked in the field for many, many years.  He has written 12 books and is quite a good writer.  I chose the book because the chapters were 3-4 pages long and it looked a bit like a Readers Digest read.

In the next two evenings I completed the book.  It was interesting in many respects and it did give me a bit of additional insight into the work my wife does.  However, as I read there was a quote Dr. Yalom used that caught my attention.  I’m never sure why one quote catches in my mind and another doesn’t even seem to land, but this one caught.  It was attributed to Sartre, a French, humanist, existential philosopher:  “We are condemned to freedom.”  As I read on the condemnation Sartre wrote of was the “responsibility, willing, wishing and deciding” that accompany this thing we call freedom.  Although I was required to read some of his work in my college and seminary days, I hadn’t found him or his thought very captivating, so I had never read him since.   But there is something tragic about this statement that got me thinking.

“We are condemned to freedom.”  The sad reality is that freedom is seen by many people to be a condemnation instead of a gift.  I relate regularly with a young man who feels as if his freedom is a condemnation instead of a gift.  He loathes the responsibility he must accept for his own life, he wills and wishes and decides, using this freedom, but it seems that the greatest majority of his willing, wishing and deciding does little but to further enslave him.  If you know an addict, you may have witnessed the same reality.
 
For those of you who are familiar with the Bible, the creation story seems quite instructive at this point, and possibly Sartre’s observation is a commentary on the reality of the condemnation that came upon our race due to our original parents’ misuse of the gift of freedom that God the Creator gave them.  God create Adam and Eve with immense freedom, a tremendous gift that was theirs because they were created in the image of the Creator.  But of course, the gift of freedom comes with responsibility.  To be free to chose, demands that we also be responsible for the choices we make and the consequence that grow from those choices.  Most of us have heard the story and know that they used their freedom to choose autonomy and rebellion and in so doing brought upon themselves and our race the consequence of death, separation from God.
 
Ever since then, our freedom has been more a condemnation than a blessing, for that bent toward autonomy and rebellion is with each of us.  It shows up early in our lives, really from day one.  In my home my youngest son voiced it well when at two years of age he planted himself in front of me, hands on hips, and announced, “I’m my own boss.”  There it was, freedom that condemned and this rather humorous scene is simply illustrative of a posture that everyone of us take when we square off against God (consciously at times but many times unconsciously) hands on our hips making the same announcement, “I am my own boss!”

This condemning freedom ruins many of our lives.  Free to be self-centered and choosing to be responsible to no one, our choices put us at odds with almost everyone in our lives.  And for those of us less courageous or less able to tolerate the stress of being at odds, we end up conforming to the requirements that others impose upon us simply because we haven’t the courage to be authentic or because we fear the consequences of what we know to lie in the depths of our heart, an autonomous and rebellious disposition; either way, feeling imprisoned by our willing and wishing and deciding.

What Dr. Yalom, Jean-Paul Sartre and many others don’t realize is that Jesus came into the world to set us free, but the freedom he came to lead us into wasn’t the condemning freedom that Sartre spoke of, but the liberty to chose right, the liberty to choose obedience, the liberty to chose in opposition to that deep seated autonomy and rebellion.  This liberty, this freedom enables us to will, wish and decide in ways that will not enslave us, but in ways that will lead us progressively and more deeply into the freedom of knowing, loving and serving God.  That was, after all the original intent of the gift of freedom, to enable us to freely chose to serve God, the only way of living that provides a deep and satisfying consequence, fellowship with the Creator.

So Irwin Yalom, from the posture of a modern psychotherapist and Jena-Paul Sartre, from the perspective of a 20th century philosopher in the end confirmed the very heart of what the Bible teaches:  That the misuse of the gift of freedom brings condemnation and bondage into our lives.  Sadly, existentialism, the philosophical posture of Sartre, provides little hope for those who discover that their freedom has condemned them; nor does the psychotherapeutic endeavors of Dr. Yalom.  This isn’t to say at all that his therapeutic engagements were not helpful, only to say that they were unable to address the root reality behind the condemning freedom with which he identified.

That, my friends, is one of the unfortunate mistakes that many of us “Christian” folks make.  We assume that people who aren’t of the Faith have nothing whatsoever to offer.  This isn’t true and it is foolish to think it is.  But what is true is that only God has a solution to the condemnation that our freedom invariably brings into our lives, to that core problem we all have with the compulsion to establish our own autonomy from God and the rebellion that grows from that commitment.  That solution is the recreation of the soul that God effects when a person yields to His desire and offer to break the bondage and overthrow the condemnation freedom that separates us from God.  5 weeks ago, or if you follow the Julian calendar, 3 weeks ago, Christmas was celebrated.  The sacred, Christian significance of that celebration was to remember the incarnation of God the Son.  The meaning of Jesus’ name points to the divine intent to “save his people from their sins.” Or as Jesus himself would announce later “to seek and to save the lost.”

Are you feeling as if the freedom you have is more a condemnation that a gift?  If you are  you are not alone, there are many, many who would gladly forfeit their freedom to be free of the responsibility it carries with it.  The best use of the gift of freedom is to choose to willingly become a servant of God.  All other uses of that freedom are destined to condemn us.