Escaping the Matrix by Gregory A. Boyd

Author:Gregory A. Boyd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9781441201379
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2005-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

God Created You to Be Free!

Neo is decisively on the side of the Bible. As much as we are influenced by factors outside ourselves, humans are free, and as a result we are responsible for our thoughts and behaviors. True, our self-chosen sin enslaves us to the point that we cannot on our own choose God without the Holy Spirit’s help (1 Cor. 12:3). But even those who remain enslaved to sin retain some power over their thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors. In any case, God is at work in the world through his Holy Spirit to enable everybody to choose God if they will yield to him.

Yet, from a biblical perspective, our freedom to choose is not our highest freedom. Indeed, it is but a provisional form of freedom. Ultimate freedom is the freedom to experience life as God intended it. Ultimate freedom is the freedom that comes from experiencing truth (John 8:32). Ultimate freedom is the freedom to participate in God’s love and to thus live life out of fullness rather than out of emptiness. But to experience this ultimate freedom, we must use our provisional freedom to choose it. We must choose to align our thoughts with God’s truth. We must choose to exercise our power to adjust our internal maps (experience) to accurately reflect the territory (truth) as defined by God. We must choose to have no other lord than Jesus Christ. We must choose to be defined from the top down and inside out. In other words, we must freely choose to be ultimately free.

Of course, if you are a follower of Jesus you have already made him Lord of your life—at least in principle. This surrender in your innermost being gives you your new identity. But choosing to allow Christ to be Lord over your life in principle is one thing; doing so in actual life is quite another. To experience the freedom and life of Jesus Christ, we must choose to have him be Lord over our thoughts on a moment-by-moment basis. We must vigilantly take every thought captive to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5). To the extent that we don’t do this, our new identity will remain an abstract truth devoid of experiential content. We will experience ourselves in actual life as being other than we truly are in Christ.

Indeed, to the extent that we do not choose to align our internal re-presentations with the truth that is in Christ, our thoughts are chosen for us. We allow ourselves to be defined by experiences of the past rather than by our Creator. We are defined from the bottom up and the outside in rather than the top down and inside out. We enthrone as functional lord our alcoholic father, our frustrated grandmother, our mischievous little brother, or any other person or event that installed lies in our lives.

To the extent that we do not take authority over our thoughts, someone or something else does. We allow ourselves to be slaves to causality. We vote yes to the Merovingian’s fatalism.

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