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| Shanghai, China |
Friends of mine were telling me recently that they had been on a visit to China. As you probably know, even visiting China, what you can and cannot do, is carefully controlled. When they were saying goodbye to their guide, he said, ‘Go enjoy your freedom.’ They were very struck by that. We often forget what it means to be in a land where we are free to do whatever we choose.
Today we talk a lot about freedom, protecting our freedom at all costs. ‘The land of the free, because of the brave.’ Thank God that we do live in a country where we are able to choose what we do and don’t want to do, and to go wherever we want to go. Real freedom is not just doing whatever you want. Choosing what is good is what leads to real freedom. If we choose what is evil, it doesn’t lead to true freedom, but to sin, which brings suffering. If we choose what is good as God shows us, it will lead to true freedom, which brings interior peace and joy. If we choose what is evil. it will lead to suffering.
What is true freedom? Real freedom is living in God’s kingdom, living by the teachings of God. If you back to the story of Adam and Eve. God told them they could eat of any tree in the garden, except for the tree of good and evil. He was telling them not to step beyond their limitations—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Recognize and respect your limitations as human beings. They experienced fulfillment and happiness because they were living in the realm of God, as He asked them to. As long as they didn’t try to play God they were fine. But they were tempted to disobey God and they gave in to the temptation. They didn’t listen to what God told them. They gave in to the temptation that ‘they could be like gods’, in other words, to choose whatever they wanted, respecting no limitations and look at what happened. It brought sin into the world, which lead to suffering. They were free to choose, but their choices did not lead to freedom, but to sin. With freedom comes responsibility.
It says that they suddenly experienced, shame, guilt, fear. They were no longer at peace with God, with each other, or within themselves, because they went against what God told them. Listening and being obedient to what God told them, led to their fulfillment. Rejecting it caused them to lose the happiness God wanted for them.
In documentaries on drug smuggling, I have often heard the reporters ask the drug dealers, or smugglers, ‘Are you not concerned about all the deaths that these drugs cause?’ and they nearly always give the same answer: ‘I just supply the drug. It’s up to the people to do whatever they want with it.’ In other words, I take no responsibility for my actions. We tell our young women that they can dress whatever way want, no matter how provocative and if it causes men to sin, that is their problem. I take no responsibility for my actions. Our society tells us that it is ok to sleep around and you don’t have to take responsibility for the consequences. If a young woman gets pregnant, we tell her that she can have an abortion. I take no responsibility for my actions.
Today, many people have abandoned the ways of God, refuse to listen to God, even deny God and sin continues to multiply. We see more and more evil. What is good is often called evil—‘Everyone should be able to do whatever they want, regardless of the consequences’—and evil is called good: abortion, euthanasia, telling children to choose their own gender. These things go against God’s commandments, and they lead to destruction and suffering. And if you criticize what God tells us is evil, then you are called evil and hateful. People are being accused of hate speech, just for quoting Scripture.
It says in the prophet Isaiah, ‘Woe to those who call evil good evil and good evil… Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.’ (Is 5:20a-21)
Recently you heard me talk about the Church in Germany, where many of the bishops have decided they now know better [than God’s word] and so can go away from Church teaching. They have now decided that it is ok to bless gay marriage, even though this goes against Church teaching. ‘Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes.’
Throughout history God continually offered the Jewish people the chance to enjoy true freedom, by living his Commandments, but they continually rejected it. Moses said to the people:
See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. (Deut 30:15-16)
True freedom is to live under God’s commandments, but it comes with responsibility. We have free will, but we are also responsible for our actions. So God points out specifically what we need to do, by giving us the Commandments. This is the path for us to find freedom.
I remember seeing one of those programs called Super-nanny, where they bring a psychologist into a family where they are having a lot of problems with their kids. In this particular case, two young children were becoming wilder and wilder and the parents didn’t know what to do. The psychologist pointed out that they needed definite rules and guidelines as to what they could and could not do. As soon as the parents began to do this, the children began to settle down. The parents initially had been afraid to enforce any rules, or guidelines, but in fact that is exactly what was needed. The children were happier once they knew and lived by their boundaries.
The Lord does the same with us. He gives us the guidelines that we need to follow and as long as we follow them, we will find inner peace. God’s commandments lead to inner freedom. It might seem like a contradiction to say that we will be free if we submit ourselves to a set of Commandments, but that is exactly what happens. It brings inner freedom.
In the Gospel today when the two disciples are downcast and can only see what has gone wrong, it says that Jesus opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. Only in God everything makes sense. He showed them that despite the human evil that led to the betrayal and death of an innocent man, God brought the greatest good out of it; not only a man rising from the dead, but opening the way for us to return to the original happiness we had lost through disobedience. Even though we sin and cause suffering, God can still bring great good out of any situation, but we will only recognize that in God. That is why it is so important that we keep going back to listen to what God is saying to us in the Scriptures, so that we can see things from God’s perspectives and not just from human perspectives. Our life on earth only makes sense in God.
The two disciples were thinking only in human terms and could only see what had gone wrong and that it hadn’t turned out as they had hoped. ‘Our own hope had been that he would be the one to free Israel…’ ‘We are so disappointed.’ But Jesus helped them to see that God has a much higher purpose that goes beyond what we can see. His plan for us is happiness and freedom, but not in the way we think. He shows us what we need to do—follow his teaching; be responsible for our actions—and that will lead to the greatest freedom, but we must listen to what He says.
‘If you live in my word, you will be my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.’ (John 8:31-32)
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