The Truth and Freedom

Jesus famously said, “the truth will set you free.”  So famous is the phrase, in fact, that I have seen it engraved on the side of university buildings.  If Jesus said it, it must be a good thing, but even a good thing can go too far.

The “too far” starts with the fact that the phrase is almost universally taken our of context.  In the same passage, Jesus was asked how His words could free someone who had never been enslaved.  He answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.  The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”  The enslavement and freedom He is discussing is something quite different than how we generally think about it.  But even the fact that He blatantly stated, “this is not about what you think it is about,” has not prevented people from making it about what they think it is about.

One of the major developments in theology in recent times is something called “liberation theology.”  On the surface it seems innocent enough – “take care of the widows and orphans,” using truth to set them free from their economic oppression.  But like out of control cancer growth, it does not stop there.  It contends that such is the primary mission of the church – not the freedom from sin Jesus is discussing, but freedom from economic oppression.  And thus liberation theology quickly turns to socialism.  Yet socialism inevitably leads to political oppression, so I don’t see where the freedom comes in.

But that does not stop the appeal, false though it is in its calls to freedom.  This same call to false freedom is running rampant in our politics today in the massive leftward tilt being seen inside the Democratic Party.  A tilt which a lot of Muslims have been rushing to get in front of.  And not just here – it is happening in Europe as well.  The combination of political Islam and socialism is a truly frightening development.  The fact that such a development plays upon a Christian theological development is satanic.

Consider this recent story from the Jerusalem Post:

The IDF released footage on Sunday showing a terrorist using a child to transfer weapons into a civilian home in central Gaza in an attempt to prevent the military from striking the location.

So let’s retrace the train of thought here.  The truth of Christ generates freedom from sin.  But we interpret that freedom as a release from economic “oppression.”  Our desire to end said “oppression” moves us towards socialism.  Islam then capitalizes on that movement and gets in front of the parade, using it to gain political power.  Once political power is obtained, it uses that position to advance itself militarily, up to and including the political enslavement of children to promote its military agenda.

That’s a pretty ugly chain of thoughts and events.  The thing is, if the church stuck to the truth Christ taught instead of the truth it wished He taught, the first link in the chain never gets established.  I get it, we are supposed to care for the least of us, Jesus was quite plain about that.  But what He really wanted was for us to be personally transformed in such a fashion that said care flows from our natural generosity, not from government structures and force.  Forced generosity is not generous.  There is no truth in it and therefore no freedom.