Love: Is It a Freedom or a Bondage?

Love: Is It a Freedom or a Bondage??

Freedom is so complex. I’ve observed so many who think they are free but they are actually bound. I’ve seen many who feel they are bound without realizing just how free they are. Our modern culture would define freedom as the ability to determine one’s own morality, to decide one’s own values. I witnessed first-hand as a young child the ‘freedom’ of the revolutionaries of the 1960’s. Their proclamation that ‘free love’ was liberating was a farce. They were bound tightly to their own sensuality and sexual exploits. They were imprisoned by their own ideas and beliefs.

So, can we so easily define freedom as the absence of restrictions and constraint? When I was a youth, about nine years old, my mother thought it would be good for me to learn to play the piano. I took several lessons but soon began to feel imprisoned by the hours of practice while my friends were out playing. I decided I’d rather run the woods than play the piano and learned to appreciate my ‘freedom’. But, had I been willing to sacrifice those hours of leisure I would certainly had learned to play the piano and today that same bondage would have given me freedom to display talents and enjoy certain achievements. At age nine I couldn’t understand the freedom that would result in my bondage.

Freedom is not really the absence of restrictions, it is finding the right restrictions, those that would benefit us most in our development. We had pet rabbits when I was young. We kept them in a hutch. We also had a dog, a German Shepherd named Bigi. We learned the hard way that sometimes restrictions can be a good thing. We felt sorry for the rabbit living in his cage, but when we set him free we exposed him to a danger he couldn’t cope with.

I hear so many who look at those of us who are Christians and they will say, “Why live in that bondage? Don’t you want to be free? You can’t decide your own morals, you are bound by such a narrow set of beliefs.” Ironically, it is the Christian’s limitations that actually make him free. Christian love may seem to be confining but it is very liberating.

When I fell in love with Shannon, my wife, I knew that loving her would require that I sacrifice some of my own independence. I knew marrying her meant sharing the decisions of the future. I knew that love limits freedom and it limits one’s options. But, there was a mysterious freedom in the limitations. The lost of independence was mutual. She also chose to live under the constraints of love. There is a mutual sacrifice and giving which may seem like a bondage but it is actually liberating. It is a joy to make offerings of sacrifice to one you love deeply.

C.S. Lewis explained it so eloquently, “Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, your must give your heart to no one, not even an animal….lock it up safe in the casket or coffin or your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken, it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.”

For a love relationship to be happy there must be mutual sacrifice. Those who have not experienced the love of God will say, “Loving God is a one way street. If he is God, it’s his way or the highway.” But this is so not true. What makes the God of the Christians so peculiar from all other imposters is that he made the sacrifice of love. He gave his only begotten Son to die a horrible death in our stead. His Son took on the limitations of humanity so he could minister to us and make that ultimate sacrifice. Faith is so important in the Christian’s relationship with God. If you are willing to accept the limitations that come with loving him you will experience a freedom you’ve never know before.