Free at Last! Free at Last!

I am free in a way that I have not been since high school. I’m not going to strip clubs, or drinking heavily, or driving down the wrong side of the road. I remain happily married to my wife.

It is not my behavior that has changed. It is the world around me. It’s suddenly gotten bigger. God is no longer a small certainty but a vast mystery. I love questions for which there are no answers. I stretch my arms and wiggle my toes. I am becoming my uninhibited, undiluted self.

My new freedom has changed the way I see others. I don’t look at people cautiously anymore, sizing them up, wondering about their political or religious views. I see every person as family. I have a strange urge to throw my arms around them and hug them. I feel no compulsion to hammer people into shape. I love them where they are, as they are, knowing that if they need any fixing, love is the one thing I can do to help.

This bigger world came at a price I nearly refused to pay.

My old world may have been small, but it was safe. Every question had an answer. God was dissected and laid out before me. If I had questions, I consulted the religious experts. They gave reasoned answers and assured me all was well. I took their word for it.

But all was not well.

Religion Is Like Communism

My tiny world was like being under a Communist regime. In exchange for my freedom, I was guaranteed my next meal. Never mind that it was cabbage and water. It was food and it appeared on schedule.

Fear kept me in my place. I was taught that outsiders were dangerous, that God was dangerous. My religion would protect me.

This system was fragile. Cracks in its logic were cracks its walls. Endless energy was poured into shoring up the walls. This was always done in the name of defending the truth but it was really just strengthening the fortress. Contradictory views were considered only before being put in front of a firing squad.

Mine was a small world, but it was safe. Leaving it is by far the hardest and best thing I have ever done.

Land of the Free

As Julie and I traveled the East Coast this summer, I felt a kinship with those who left Europe and came to America. I thrilled to the words of Thomas Jefferson, inscribed inside the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial,

“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

Our ancestors fled the tyranny of church and state to find freedom. They left houses and lands, fathers and mothers, and friends and neighbors to risk carving out a new life in a hostile wilderness. Why go through all that? Freedom. They wanted the right to be themselves, to think their own thoughts, to worship their own God. They were willing to risk their lives for this.

The spirit of dogma came over from Europe on the ships too, but this spirit did not prevail. The most incredible thing about America is that she did not fight a war to decide whose God was the real God. Instead, she proclaimed herself, “land of the free.” I get goose bumps thinking of it.

Freedom Is No Joke 

Political and religious systems may put you in chains but they feed and protect you. If you leave, you must stand on your own two feet. It’s terrifying. You are like a bird that has lived its entire life in a cage. Do you know how to fly? Can you even feed yourself?

For me the answers were, “No,” and “No.” When I stepped out of my religion, I promptly fell to the ground and began to starve. I limped along for months. When I tried to fly, I crashed into trees. Freedom is no joke. I have the bruises to prove it.

When you give your life to a political or religious system you don’t have to lug around your own soul. “They” carry it for you.