Saturday July 10, 2004

The Two-Edged Sword of Freedom

Well, I can't say y'all were very much help in the sermon department, but my son Joe came through with a great insight, and that did the trick. This is, more or less, what I talked about last Sunday, July 4, on which we read the gospel account of the Gergesene demoniacs, and celebrated the memory of, among others, St. Andrew of Crete and Tsar Nicholas and the Royal Martyrs of Russia.

What do these things (including Independence Day) have to do with one another? Not much, on the surface. But if you think about it, there's a common thread that connects them all, and that is the idea of freedom.

Freedom is our greatest gift from God; it is His image in us. Free will is that in us which makes us like God. Think back to the Garden of Eden, and the very first thing God gives Adam to do: "Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name." (Genesis 2:19) Adam shares in the act of creation with God; God forms the thing, and (this is so cool) He immediately brings it to Adam to see what its name should be -- and think of "name" in the loaded biblical sense of containing something of the essence of the thing. Our free will makes us like God, in a good way.

But the next thing you know, we misuse the gift. The serpent tells Eve a lie -- a half-truth, really, which is the most pernicious kind of lie:

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?" And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.'" And the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:1-4)

The serpent was correct; eating the forbidden fruit (note that it never says it was an apple) bestows on Eve,and then on Adam, another attribute of God -- but it was a gift they were not ready for, a gift they had been forbidden by God for their own protection. (Fire can be handy to have around, but we don't let children play with matches.) Trying to be God-like without God, God-like on their own terms, they broke off from the source of their life and well-being, were banished from the Garden, and... well, that explains so very much of the world we see around us today. Freedom used poorly leads to disaster.

St. Andrew of Crete, in his Great Penitential Canon, spends a great deal of time lamenting our fall. He also considers, of course, the central and most important event in the Old Testament, the exodus of the Children of Israel from their captivity in Egypt. Think back: God gives His people the gift of freedom; they cross the Red Sea and journey to Mount Sinai, where God calls Moses to come to Him on the mountain, to receive the law. What happens next?

Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, "Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him." And Aaron said to them, "Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me." So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf. Then they said, "This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!" (Exodus 32:1-4)

Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Israelites tried to make their own god, on their own terms (this time, a calf, rather than themselves); once again, they broke off from the source of their life and well-being, and after a number of rounds of this sort of thing in the wilderness, God more or less gave up on their whole generation (but for Joshua and Caleb, who alone were faithful to Him). There was no hope for them, only for their children. Freedom used poorly leads to disaster.

Now, let's take a huge leap in time, and consider (briefly) the Russian revolution. The people rebelled against a repressive feudal society, exercising their free will. But they turned against God and the Church in the process, killing the Royal Family and hundreds of thousands of bishops, priests, deacons, monks and nuns -- and for their trouble, suffered for seventy years under the even-more-repressive Soviet regime. Freedom used poorly leads to disaster.

Or consider the American revolution. Our forefathers rebelled against repressive Colonial rule from England, which rebellion we obviously consider to be a good thing, given that we're celebrating its 228th anniversary on July 4. And yet... without repeating the sermon on Reality TV, you have to admit that we're not using our freedom very wisely. God seems fairly far out of our picture. We exercise our free will -- consistently -- with no regard for its giver, or His intentions in giving it to us. You have to wonder what the outcome will be. Given our track record since the (very) beginning, it's bound to get us into trouble one of these days.

It turns out, however, that the starkest example of all is in the gospel reading from St. Matthew. My son reminded me that the same demons who were possessing the two Gergesene men were once angels, and that the angels were free. Lucifer, the most radiant of them all (his name means "Light-bearer"), led half of their cohort in rebellion against God. (Purportedly because they were incensed -- no pun intended -- that the image of God was in man, not in angels, and that the Son of God would become incarnate in human form rather than angelic.) These fallen angels -- who used their freedom so poorly -- show plainly what is the outcome of such poor use: defilement and self-destruction:

Now a good way off from them there was a herd of many swine feeding. So the demons begged Him, saying, "If You cast us out, permit us to go away into the herd of swine." And He said to them, "Go." So when they had come out, they went into the herd of swine. And suddenly the whole herd of swine ran violently down the steep place into the sea, and perished in the water. (Matthew 8:30-32)

This is the unavoidable end of the misuse of the great gift of freedom, truly a two-edged sword.

Of course, what should frighten us the most is the epilogue of the gospel story: "Then those who kept [the herd of swine] fled; and they went away into the city and told everything, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. And behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus. And when they saw Him, they begged Him to depart from their region." (Matthew 8:33-34)

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve turned away from God, unknowing. In Jesus's time, the Gergesenes turned away from God, unknowing -- even casting Him out of their city.

Two thousand years later, are we any wiser?

(2004-07-10 16:55:15.0) Permalink Comments [1]