A Grace Revealed by Jerry L. Sittser

Author:Jerry L. Sittser [Sittser, Jerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780310411918
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2012-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

FREEDOM AND ENSLAVEMENT

We thus have the freedom to choose. But what kind of freedom is it? When I became a single father after the accident, it was clearly not a role I would have chosen for myself. Beyond the obvious truth that my children needed their mother, I was at best ill-suited for the role. Lynda was the real parent; I saw myself as her assistant. I smile often these days when I ponder the irony — no, the craziness — of the story. The parent least qualified was thrust into the dominant role.

There was no typecasting in this story. I had to grow into the role, fight my natural selfishness, and do the best I could, which often wasn’t very good. I prayed a lot and kept at it. There was little “freedom” in such a life; if anything, I felt more like one of Michelangelo’s prisoner sculptures. Over time, however, I discovered that it was within those very circumstances that I could find true freedom. My “sentence” as a prisoner turned out to be my liberation, my confinement set me free. I grew to relish the role because it helped me to grow up and forced me to turn from my circumstances to the one who rules over them.

Freedom has become a popular idea in our culture; it functions like a doctrine that shapes our worldview and our decisions. We define freedom as both increasing number of options and exercising limitless choice. Freedom as ever-increasing options emerged with the market economy; freedom as limitless choices is rooted in popular notions of civil liberty. It is not quality of choice that matters, only quantity; not the right choice, only freedom of choice. Never mind the consequences! But it hasn’t worked out very well, as we all know. If anything, these notions of freedom have often made us miserable.

The author of the redemptive story has given his characters freedom. But the freedom God gives is as peculiar as the story itself. It is not the number of options, not limitless choice. It is relationship with God and submission to God. True freedom consists, not in obsessing about circumstances but in trusting the God who transcends them, not in pursuing our own way but in surrendering to God’s way. However bewildered we may be by the strange turns our stories have taken, we can come to know the author who stands behind the plot. We can thus plead our case, ask for help, and wait for redemption.

Such is the paradox of the redemptive story — we lose to gain, die to live, renounce to inherit, surrender ourselves to get ourselves back. We gain true freedom only when we surrender it and choose to know, trust, and obey God. The plot of the story unfolds in the strangest of ways: the characters in the story — lost, rebellious, and perverse — submit their will to the divine will, aligning their freedom with the loving intent of the author. In this story, the

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