August 22, 2007
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I don’t want my freedom!
Last night, I took Squiggers (one of our guinea pigs) out of the C&C cage to give her some floor time. I wanted to spend time with her, pet her (love on her), feed her, give her some freedom — but after taking only a few bites of her carrot, she wandered away from me and back toward her cage. She then proceeded to gnaw repeatedly on the frame of the cage as if to say, “I want to get back in!” I tried to coax her away from her cage by giving her a fresh green leaf of lettuce. This worked for a few ravenous bites, but then she went back to the cage again.
I was frustrated. “C’mon, Squiggers, look at all this great food I have for you.” “Don’t you want me to pet you?” “Why do you want to go back in when you could have freedom?”
As I watched my silly piggie I couldn’t help but think (you knew a metaphor was coming, didn’t you?
) how perfectly her actions reflect human folly. Jesus has set us free from the yoke of rules and traditions, the human bondages of culture and society, and the barriers, prejudices and stereotypes which keep us from one another; and yet, too many of us too many times run away from Him and scream, “I don’t want my freedom!” “I want to stick to the old ways — the caged life is for me.” We continue to judge one another from a human point of view, instead of Christ’s, and hold each other to a worldly standard which has been passed down from generation to generation without truly examining whether it is God’s ideal or a human framework.So is it God’s ideal or a human framework? One phrase I learned from the CBE conference was, “unexamined assumptions.” I think that many of us have unexamined conclusions about what God really says about men and women’s roles. Have we truly examined the issue? I definitely am one who lived far too long with unexamined assumptions. I didn’t really examine; I just presumed…
and I missed verses like Acts 2:17-18. In it, Peter quotes the prophet Joel, “In the last days, God says, I will pour my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy…Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit…and they will prophesy.” It never even clicked for me how clear it was that God’s ideal was to pour His Spirit on all people, men and women, low class and high class…, to prophesy (meaning to understand and interpret His divine will so that others may heed — this is akin to the authority of preaching, I think). There is no gender bias or prejudice. I can’t help but wonder now how I missed that. How did I not know that God wants to manifest His Spirit on all people, without partiality, for the common good? I can see now that it was because I, like Squiggers, had been foolishly sticking to the cage of traditions while God was promising me freedom. I wish I had heard God saying to me, “Look at all this food I have for you. Come enjoy the freedom.”
