If People Are Free, Then We Will Preach Bondage

The wonderful and always worth listening to MockingCast had a recent episode that in part highlighted why the Gospel message is one of freedom. One of the co-hosts, RJ, stated that if you believe that people are in bondage then you will preach liberation and if you believe that people are free you will preach bondage.

Sit with this little insight for a moment. Consider the Container Store. It is an entire store profiting on the idea that you and I are so free in our lives that we are willing to pay for some plastic containers that can bind up our cabinets and closets. We pay for calendars and schedules that bind us to our commitments and responsibilities. How many diets are preached that are built around binding you from eating certain things? In a land of plenty of food where we are free to eat whatever and whenever we want, we do not know how to handle it. So we pay for some binding. Sometimes freedom is so open that we are prone to wander, prone to leave that which we love.

The gospel of binding is all around us because we are under the impression that we are too free.

This bleeds into church messages. Often churches will craft messages in ways that assume that people are too free and what people need is to be bound up. They need to be bound in what to believe. Bound to follow laws or rules. Bound to action and inaction. If our messages are help bind people, it could be that we believe that people are too free.

Conversely, if we craft messages that are meant to liberate people it is because it is assumed that people are not free at all. Jesus preaches and teaches in such a way that assumes that people are bound and they need liberation. He does not give more rules to follow - in fact he speaks of only two. He preaches release of the captives and the year of the Lord’s favor. Jesus preaches and teaches one of liberation because he knows the people are too bound. But it not just humans that are too bound. When given the choice to liberate or bind the demons living in a man in Mark 5, Jesus liberates the demons to go into the swine. Jesus saw that even the demons were bound and needed liberation, and so he extends mercy to allow them to enter into the swine.

This does not mean Jesus’ message is without binding. Far from it. In the moment of glory, Jesus allows himself to handed over to a people who believed he was too free, and they tried to silence him by binding him to the cross.

If we believe that people are bound then we will preach liberation. When we preach liberation, the powers and principality that are dependent upon our bondage will come for us. These powers will seek to discredit, shame, bind and even kill the one who assumes that people are in bondage.

No wonder so many of us would rather wave flags and banners proclaiming how free we all are. In our chants of freedom we are blind to the ways we are in bondage. In our assumptions that people are free our messages become binding and restrictive.

In a bit of tragic irony, when we assume people are free, we have liberated ourselves from receiving the True freedom that comes from God in Christ. And we remain in bondage, assuming we are free.

Giving as a Discipline of Unlearning

The more I engage with the spiritual disciplines of my faith tradition, the more I am shown their pedagogy. Rather than teaching me things, the disciplines guide me to unlearn what I thought I knew.

For example, the discipline of giving financially to the work of God. I tend to be one who feels there will not be enough money in my life to meet my needs. So I am prone to withhold my giving because what if I need something and don’t have the money for it? Or what about saving for retirement? Shouldn’t I give as little as I can to ensure that I have enough saved for my golden years? Also, I am a better decider of how my money should be spent and so why should I trust another who will frivolously spend it?

Notice how much I think I “know” about how the world works in these basic assumptions.

The discipline and practice of giving shows me I need to unlearn what I know. It is impossible to learn a new way until I unlearn the old way. As such the discipline of giving is not something that will teach me anything but will help me unlearn the old assumptions. This is why we say through giving God transforms us. It is not the giving that changes us, it is God that changes us as we go through the practice of giving. The discipline is not the destination, it is the bridge that can help us get to a different place.

As of late, many in my denomination are choosing to not give to the denomination because of how the church upholds or violates rules. I get it. Who would want to give to an organization that perpetuates what you feel is sin? What the practice of giving to the church has shown me is that I do not withhold my money to other organizations that perpetuate sin. Tech companies still gets my money, despite knowing work conditions are not good. I bought a “Trump brand” tie, knowing that there are ethical matters related to the president using the office for personal financial gain. I pay my taxes knowing that wars are waged with those monies. I shop on Amazon knowing that the discount I get comes at the cost of selling my data. I scroll through facebook knowing that they care less about connection then about the bottom line.

The discipline of giving has shown me that I am in great need to unlearn the false story I tell myself: I only give to organizations that I fully support.

The Church has her faults and I am a part of the organization. I confess and repent of my failings in the organization. However, it is revealed to me that if I am going to give my money to organizations that exploit and do damage in the world, then I can also give money to those organizations that are trying, but are not immune to fault, to repair the world. For all her faults, the Church is trying to repair the world. The Church educates and builds hospitals. When the private sector cannot see a profit in a problem the church steps in and tries to fill the need (it is churches that are housing people on the boarder, not businesses). The Church is involved in prisons and psychiatric wards. The Church is there when you are born to remind you that you are loved and there when you die to bless you as important.

I have so much to unlearn about what I “know” to be true. I give thanks for the spiritual disciplines that are a means to unlearn the false so that I might learn the Truth of God.

The Problem Is We Practice "No Other Gods Before Me"

Of the “Ten Commandments” perhaps you can name a few: Don’t steal, Don’t murder, honor you mother and father, keep sabbath. Many of these are straight forward, but Peter Rollins mentions an interesting point from philosopher Slavoj Zizek. The point that I gathered is Zizek argues that commandment “You shall have no other Gods before me” might me that we should not have gods “in front” the God of the Bible. As in physically before, in front of. The idea being that we all have little gods and perhaps the commandment is saying, keep your other little gods, just don’t worship them in before (in front of or prior to worshiping) God.

This may sound odd but the Bible does not begin at monotheism. Monotheism says that there is ONLY one God. However, when you read the Bible you will see that there are in fact many gods. For instance, Psalm 82 assume there are many gods: God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment (82:1). In a monotheistic worldview there is no need to mention other gods.

However the Bible does not stay in the polytheistic world very long before it makes a theological step toward monotheism. Before arriving at monotheism, there is a long stop at something called henotheism. Henotheism might admit there are other gods, but that our God is the best. Psalm 95 says, For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.

This is where Zizek’s observation comes into play. The Ten Commandments is in the era of henotheism and thus having no other gods before the God of the Bible makes sense in a henotheistic world.

But today we are supposed to be monotheistic. That is we are supposed to understand that there is only one God. No others. This God is the Alpha and the Omega - the greatest and the weakest. God is all there is.

However, a case might be made that we are stuck in the henotheism. We live our lives taking the commandment “no other gods before me” very literally. That is, we worship our little gods of power, money, ego, prestige, nature, resentment, and envy but we don’t do it “before” we worship God of Jesus Christ.

The problem is not that we worship God, it is that we practice having no other gods before God.