The Purpose of Freedom, Part 2

I am utterly at a loss of what to do about many global problems, especially war.  There has to be a better way than bombing places and killing civilians.  What if we used our soldiers to fight against problems in our own country and used all the resources we pour into our military to fight some serious problems in the states?

There are so many people who serve in our armed forces who are brilliant and I have to believe there’s a better use of their mental capabilities than figuring out how to best kill our enemies.  We have so many problems at home.  Similarly, why am I living in Myanmar when there are plenty of problems at home?

All I can say is I feel called to overseas missions and have for quite some time.  The thing I’ve realized and that saddens me is that a lot of people who say things along the lines of, “Well you should do more for people in your own country” usually are the ones who do nothing themselves in our own country.  Why is this?  If they’re so passionate about me serving stateside why don’t they do the same?

How do you create freedom for others?  Ultimately, I believe Jesus creates freedom for others.  That’s what we see in the New Testament.  From the time Jesus announced He had come to set the prisoners free to the time Paul was in prison but was still free according to him, freedom is an underlying current in all of Scripture and particularly in the New Testament.

Jesus is the creator of freedom, and so we must introduce others to Him.  Be careful though.  If you introduce someone to Jesus there is a good chance they will watch your behaviors more closely to see if you live what you claim as truth.  Does knowing Jesus make us any different than the world around us?  Are we truly living lives of freedom or something else?  Are we living for Christ or are we enslaved by the idols around us?

We mustn’t live in a state of fear.  People use fear all the time to intimidate and ultimately enslave others.  It’s why we spend so much money on anti-terrorism and not on preventable diseases like heart disease or other diseases that lead to many more deaths than terrorism.

Furthermore, I think our priorities as a Western society have dramatically gone off course.  We seem to care more and become more outraged by the mistreatment of animals than of humans.  Some giraffe was killed recently and there was outrage around the Western world.  Simultaneously there are hundreds of people dying in Syria and South Sudan from war and thousands of people are dying of starvation or preventable diseases.  We seem to be more concerned with the well-being of animals instead of humans.  How can this be?

Freedom is a tricky and slippery concept.  We view it differently depending on where we were raised.  We also view it differently depending on how we were raised, what kind of household our parents brought us up in.  I view it in the lens of Jesus; other people view it differently than that.  One thing I hold onto, freedom is created from the bottom up, not the top down.