Freedom, i.e., both the idea and fact of being no longer under domination by external forces, occupies a major place in modern human life, both at a personal as well as international level. Freedom is, especially, touted by USAns as their mark of national distinctiveness. Freedom is a central theme in Scripture too but it is also diametrially different from the freedom espoused by USAns. As evident in the North American culture in the last two decades in particular, freedom is the right "to do just as I wish" (including, often, the right to upset our neighbours just because we do not approve of what they do). This is not freedom as Scripture understands it.
Two dramatic incidences in Scripture highlight the difference. We begin with the one from the New Testament.
43'When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. 44Then it says, "I will return to the house I left." When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. 45Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.' (Matt. 12:43-45 NIB)
Whatever other lessons we may learn from Jesus's exposition here, one principle is clear. It is a delusion to think that we can be absolutely free. Clean or unclean, our inner house is always open to invasion by unwanted guests, and the only way to keep it clean is that we deliberately keep it so. Most of us, however, do not live examinied lives so that we know what actually occupies our house. Paul drives home this point to remind us that, unless the Holy Spirit A person may be free from one unclean spirit, but if the space formerly occupied is not occupied by something stronger, the resulting fate may be worse than the first.
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©ALBERITH