Freedom

It so happens that every once in a while God sees fit to put me in a group of people who I have no reason to be around other than to pray for them. Recently I was in such an environment and (this is the one subject that everybody in the world has an opinion on) college advise was being dispensed. The general consensus was summarized articulately as "you have the freedom to do whatever you want".

Freedom is a horribly popular theme in high school too, especially when uniforms, rules and expectations are the norm. Everybody seems to think that it would be freeing to somehow make a clothing statement by it's absence, or that what is really holding them back from being free is that the glue which adheres their hand to their cellphone must be (most annoyingly, no doubt) removed at 8 and reapplied at 3. That's no freedom at all though. It's freedom to be miserable, sure, but what kind of freedom is that? Unfortunately freedom is rarely defined literally as "the ability to do good as one pleases". Instead it's only "to do as one pleases".

Perhaps Mssrs Miriam and Webster assumed on the common sence of English language speakers. What slave ever said "thank the Lord that I have been given the freedom to be enslaved while these pitiable white men do not have the freedoms I enjoy"? It's a mistaken notion of sin which fosters the statement "you can do everything you want". If the speaker understood that that which does not get us to heaven simply serves to make us miserable they could never celebrate the ability to distance themselves from happiness.

In the end you don't really gain many freedoms in college. The other word I'm sick of is "success", and college won't give you any opportunity at that either. What success is it to make money when that money means nothing compared to the riches God offers us every day, free of charge? What freedom is it to drink like a fish when that will only ever make you miserable. Maybe you'll be able to supply a fair amount of temporary happiness for yourself, but once you get tired of convincing yourself that your happy your true state will set in. We already have the freedom to pursue God. If were enslaved on earth we're all the more pleasing to him. That is freedom.