Slavery and Freedom

The scriptures referred to are Romans 6:12-23.

Prominent anti-theist Sam Harris has a new book out called Free Will. The title seems ironic because Harris argues that we don't actually have free will. Harris bases this on the observation that neuroscientists have detected that people seem to make choices subconsciously milliseconds before they are aware they are making them. From this and a reductionist view of reality that says nothing but the material world exists, he says we don't actually consciously make choices. It's all just conditioning and chemicals and synapses and DNA behaving according to natural laws. Free will is an illusion.

There are several problems with this. For one thing, in the experiment people were told to push a button or flex their wrist and to report when they were aware that they were going to do it. The EEG electrodes attached to their heads merely showed that activity in the supplementary motor area of the brain (or SMA) took place a half a second before the person said they were aware of deciding to make the move. Does that activity reveal a subconscious decision being made or does it merely show a shift of attention to the wrist or button or does it simply show an expectation that some kind of move is coming? Other experiments have shown the same activity in the SMA when people are only imagining moving or even deciding not to move. Concluding we have no free will from such an ambiguous experimental finding seems like a huge leap in reasoning.

Besides if Harris is right and we have no free will then I don't know who he is trying to persuade. He thinks people can't change their minds. His book therefore is useless. But I don't blame him for deciding to write it. He couldn't help but do it.

It's not only certain scientists who think we have no free will but some theologians as well. Certain Calvinists feel we are all so corrupted by sin that we cannot decide on our own to trust God. Which makes the Bible superfluous. If people can't choose God, why give them a book that urges them to? Why does our passage from Romans begin with “Do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions”? The Greek is in the imperative. Paul is telling the reader not to act in a certain way. Surely he means to persuade us. If not, why bother?

I think when it comes to free will people make the same mistake that we do when we use the word “free” in any context. We think that true freedom must mean unlimited freedom to do anything at all. But our right to free speech doesn't mean we can lie on contracts or slander someone or libel them. It famously doesn't mean we can falsely yell “fire” in a crowded theater or incite people to riot. In real life freedom has its limits. As my 8^th grade teacher used to say, your freedom to swing your arms ends at the tip of my nose. Total freedom is neither ethical, practical or even possible.

In the same way, our free will is not absolutely free. What I choose to do will be influenced by various factors: my abilities, my education, my life experience, my personality. To some extent, they make my decisions fairly predictable. If given a choice between attending an MMA match or watching a Sherlock Holmes film, my family knows how I will decide. But I could decide to surprise them by acting differently.

Things like ability, education, life experience and personality don't totally rule certain things out. A person with a disability can with effort and creativity find other ways to do things folks might not think possible for them. Paralyzed people have learn to paint holding the brush in their teeth. People in wheelchairs have figured out how to dance. Helen Keller, who could neither see nor hear, learned how to speak using her voice.

People without formal education have taught themselves how to do things. Steven Spielberg couldn't get into film school but made a short film that got him a contract to direct television. Nikola Tesla never got a degree in engineering or physics but was a brilliant inventor. He's the reason we use alternating current for our electrical power.

People have overcome some terrible childhoods or later life experiences. Carol Burnett had alcoholic parents and was raised by her grandmother who lived down the hall from her mother. She not only did not succumb to that addiction but introduced AA into Russia. Gavin De Becker's mother was a heroin addict who shot his stepfather. That night De Becker saw the signs that his mother was ramping up and got his little sister and himself to safety in the back bedroom before the shooting took place. He became the head of a security company working with companies, celebrities and even the government on threat assessments. Andrew Solomon fell into a deep depression following his mother's suicide after her long battle with cancer. Through therapy and antidepressants he has become an award-winning writer. I highly recommend his book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression.

And what are our personalities but fairly well established patterns of thinking, speaking and acting? But those too can change. African American musician Daryl Davis has been befriending KKK members for the last 30 years and convincing them to leave the Klan. He has 200 Klu Klux Klan robes that they have given him to prove it. James H. Fallon is a neuroscientist who studies the brains and genetics of psychopaths. He used the brain scans of normal persons as a control group. So he was startled to find that he had the brain of a psychopath. A gene profile confirmed it. His family told him of his lack of fear, regrets and limited empathy. His mother told him they were related to Lizzie Borden! Since learning this he has worked on being more thoughtful of others. The cards he was dealt by his DNA did not determine his future.

Which is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6. After listing a variety of people who will not inherit the kingdom of God, he says, “Some of you once lived this way. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God. (1 Corinthians 6:11) If people cannot change then these people would not be able to enter God's kingdom. But they did change through faith in Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.

And it wasn't like God came upon them unawares and forced them to change. As Paul says a little later in Romans, “How are they to believe in one they have not heard of? And how are they to hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14) Why do they need to hear preaching unless they need it to make a conscious decision to trust and follow Jesus?

But as anyone who has ever been enslaved to a habit or an addiction will tell you, it's hard to change. And one of the things we do to avoid having to change is not follow what we are doing to its logical end. We know that recreational drug use, smoking, and drinking damage the body and eventually lead to death. But few consider that when they first try them. All people think about is the pleasure these bring. Studies have also shown that activities like gambling trigger the same response in the brain that substances do, meaning certain activities can be addictive. Addictions are diseases of the brain.

When asked why he ate with sinners, Jesus said, “Those who are healthy don't need a physician but those who are sick do. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.” (Mark 2:17) So sin can be thought of as a spiritual sickness. Sins are those thoughts, words and deeds that are harmful to ourselves, to others and to our relationship with God. Sin also leads to spiritual death, which is separation from God. And like the addict we find ourselves slaves to sin. (John 8:34)

Now it can look like someone with an addiction has no free will. Because as the addiction takes control of their lives, they will sacrifice everything—loved ones, jobs, home and possessions—to continue feeding the habit. Surely they wouldn't give up such things if they had free will, would they?

But while their will is certainly impaired it is not totally gone. Because people do get free of their addictions. Jamie Lee Curtis is a recovering alcoholic who used to be addicted to opioid painkillers. For Robert Downey Jr. his addiction began when he was 8 and included cocaine and heroin. He was arrested several times and spent time in jail and in prison. He lost his wife and was fired from several films and TV shows. After another arrest in 2001, he said to himself, “'You know what? I don't think I can continue doing this.' And I reached out for help and I ran with it.” Now he is one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. About overcoming his addiction, he said, “What's hard is to decide to do it.”

A person in AA once summarized the first 3 steps of the 12 step program this way: “I can't. God can. I'm going to let him.” We cannot save ourselves from sin but we can decide to let Jesus do it. We can decide to trust him and let him go to work on us. When I had my accident no amount of eating healthier and getting more exercise and thinking positive thoughts was going to repair my broken legs and arms and ribs and my collapsed lung. Only a surgeon could open me up and put me back together. All I could do was trust him to do it.

And afterwards, while my body was fixed, I would have been bedbound for life if I hadn't followed the doctors' orders and done the physical therapy they prescribed. But I couldn't just do it halfway or when I felt like it. As a nurse I had patients who had new hips or knees but never walked again because they said their physical therapy was too difficult or too painful. I wasn't going to be like them.

Only Jesus can free us from the sins that enslave us. And only by following the guidance and encouragement of the Spirit can we take full advantage of our freedom in Christ and learn to walk with God.

Living at a time when 20% of the people in the Roman empire were slaves, Paul uses that as a metaphor for being dominated by sin. And it is disconcerting to hear him say that the alternative is to be a slave of God. But when I was in physical therapy learning to walk again I had to become a slave to the routine of going there everyday and doing whatever task the therapists gave me that day. I had to do it religiously, so to speak.

But by trusting the doctors and slavishly following the therapists' instructions, I now have freedom. I have the freedom to walk and to drive. I have the freedom to feed myself, which was difficult when I had broken both wrists and they were in a casts for weeks and had to be strengthened afterwards. I was free to return to leading services at my churches and free to resume my ministry at the jail.

In the same way, when we let Jesus become our master we gain the freedom to do things that are good and healthy for us and for our relationships with other people and for our relationship with God. What we are not free to do is stuff that is harmful and leads to spiritual sickness and death. Why would we want to go back to that?

And, yes, almost every time we are called servants of God in the Bible the underlying Hebrew or Greek word actually means slaves. Because God freed his people from slavery in Egypt. And Jesus bought us out of slavery to sin. As Paul wrote, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) When we use the word “redeem” what it means is literally “to buy or ransom.” The person who bought a kinsman out of slavery was called his redeemer.

And Jesus even used this language of servitude about himself. He said, “...whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:43-45) Taking this further, on the night he was betrayed, Jesus stripped off his cloak and tied a towel around his waist and washed the feet of his disciples, a task usually carried out by the lowest slave. After he was finished he said, “Do you understand what I have done for you? You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and do so correctly, for that is what I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you too ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example—you should do just as I have done for you.” (John 13:12-15) We serve Jesus by serving others as he did. We serve him out of love and gratitude for what he did, redeeming us from our destructive and self-destructive sins at the cost of his life.

Death on the cross was reserved for slaves and traitors. So Jesus even died as a slave would. In fact, this was one of the things that led secular historian Tom Holland to write his latest book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. While writing his previous histories of Greek and Roman leaders, he found their mindsets hard to get into. They believed in gaining power and glory and conquering others. They did not believe all people were equal, so they could be unbelievably cruel to others. To Holland, it was alien way of thinking. And he realized that today's people have been shaped, whether they realize it or not, by Christian moral values. The Greeks and Romans worshiped strength and despised weakness. The idea of worshiping a God who died on a cross was absurd. Things like equality and helping the poor and outcasts and victims and turning the other cheek were not Greco-Roman values but came from the New Testament. And as Christianity spread, the idea of what society should value and what we see as good and right behavior changed.

And we have seen how corrupt the church becomes when it begins valuing power and denigrating certain people. Paul said, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female—for all of you are one in Christ.” (Galatians 3:28) We are all created in God's image and Jesus died for all.

Still don't like the idea of being called a slave? Well, as Bob Dylan sang, you gotta serve somebody. We are either slaves to our own appetites and desires and fears, or we serve other human leaders, or we serve the God of love revealed in Jesus Christ. And if we serve him, we can look forward to the day when he says to us, “I no longer call you slaves, because the slave does not understand what his master is doing. But I have called you friends because I have revealed to you everything I heard from my Father.” (John 15:15) When we see Jesus face to face, we will be like him, freed from not just the penalty and power of sin in our lives but its very presence. (1 John 3:2) On that day we will know true freedom. Because, as Jesus said, “...if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36)