Publications

Cry freedom!

The astute reader will notice that the above title is not original, borrowed as it is from a movie about the situation in South Africa under Apartheid.  Based on a true story, I found it stirring, as well as frightening.  Frightening because of its portrayal of how a minority of supremacists can deprive a huge majority of their basic human freedoms and do it under the guise of law and order, civilised behaviour and even humanitarianism. Its title was apt. It also fits what I want to say here.

The domination of one group by another is, of course, as old as humanity itself and the phrase, ‘man’s inhumanity to man,’ has become so hackneyed as to lose its impact. Nevertheless the insatiable desire to dominate, to control, to use and abuse, continues unabated in every social setting from families to nations … to churches.

As a result, freedom continues to be a quest, a passion, a goal for the captive oppressed. But what does freedom mean, how is it attained and what are its implications?

When Moses arrived in Egypt as a grizzled, eighty year old, shepherd, he hardly looked like your stereotype freedom-fighter. Yet he had a mandate from God – and I want to emphasize here that it was specifically God’s call to Moses which sent him to Egypt as the liberator of the Israelites, and not Moses’ personal passion to see them set free.

Moses had expressed his own feelings forty years earlier when, as an Egyptian prince, he killed a taskmaster who was beating a Hebrew slave. That was the sum of his personal attempt to single-handedly right the wrongs being inflicted upon God’s people. His campaign failed abjectly before It even got off the ground and the result for Moses was exile and obscurity in a foreign land.

By the age of eighty Moses was, to all appearances, a spent force. No doubt he still carried the plight of his people on his heart, but any thoughts of liberating them from the Egyptian yoke had long ago died. Though Moses cared, he was powerless. He was also a forgotten memory, both to the Egyptians and to the Hebrews. But not to God.

God not only cared passionately about His people. groaning in their slavery, but He also knew how He would set them free and through whom He would do it.

When God’s call came to Moses, the old shepherd was more than surprised. He was shocked, he was incredulous, and he was scared. But he was also God’s chosen man; and God’s people can only be led into their God-given freedom by the men He sends.

Throughout history God has always responded to the cry of His oppressed people. Though destined for a life of joy and fulfilment as the chosen of God, their lot – both that of Old Testament Jew and New Testament Christian alike – has often been very much the opposite. Why? Sometimes because of mass apostasy on the people’s part; often because their leaders, who should have led them in God’s way, have exploited them instead. Usually, though, it has been a mixture of both.

When Jesus came to God’s people He found them oppressed and exploited by those who were supposed to be their godly leaders. Those men became the targets of His denunciations. He fearlessly thundered against them for the way they were fleecing and slaughtering God’s sheep. They, in turn, had Him nailed to a cross.

The people, for their part, had flocked to hear and follow Jesus … for awhile. His miracles, His humanity, His love and His care, all drew vast crowds to Him – until they began to realise that the freedom He offered was incredibly costly. It’s frightening to contemplate that the same crowd who clamoured to make Him their king were so soon clamouring for Him to be crucified.

In previous Outreach Letters I have had much to say about the Christian system which imprisons God’s people in His name, while keeping them from the very life and fulfilment Jesus came to give. In the context of what I have to say here, that is but one side of the picture. The other side can best be highlighted with a question: are those who are currently groaning under the yoke of religious oppression willing to be led to freedom on God’s terms and by the men He sends?

For some readers that doubtless introduces a whole new element. I wonder how many of those who, to date, have agreed with, and even given vigorous assent to, my statements about the Christian religious system and its representatives, will just an vigorously embrace what I have to say here.

Once you see it for what it is, it’s not very hard to find the freedom-depriving oppressiveness – the mistrust and lack of true love – endemic in Christianity. But what is the alternative? Is it to throw It all over? Is it to cast it away, even bury it, as thousands of revolutionaries have done with oppressive systems of all kinds over the centuries? Is that all there is to liberation?

Attractive though it may seem to the oppressed captives, there is no true liberty to be found in staging a revolution in the name of freedom. Nor is liberation to be found in lawlessness.

When the Jesus Movement emerged in the days of hippiedom it also took upon itself many of the latter’s ways. It was ‘in’ to attack the establishment, to despise that which was ‘straight’ and conventional.

The problem, according to the hippie Christians, lay in organised religion. The solution, therefore, was to dismantle the structure – replacing organisation with dis-organization, or at least with non-organization.

Spurning ‘straight’ Christianity, its ways, its dress and its conventions, the Jesus People preached a gospel of ‘liberty and freedom’ – in Jesus’ name, of course.

I well remember my fascination when I first came across those ‘revolutionary’ Christians on the streets of Los Angeles in 1970. Their approach was novel, it was certainly contemporary and it was fired with a lot of zeal. Who was I to judge? Maybe this was indeed the new wave which would overhaul the church and sweep many into God’s kingdom.

A few weeks later I got to talking with some Jesus People in downtown Seattle. They proudly informed me they were with The Jesus People’s Army, currently ‘invading’ that city. By then my doubts were beginning to surface. But were they valid, or was my growing discomfort merely a telltale symptom of my own embarrassing straightness? They certainly seemed to be reaching a great many for Jesus and their unashamed proclamations of their faith made traditional Christians look positively furtive.

Yet today we stand at a point where both the Jesus Movement and the Hippie subculture which spawned it are fascinating relics of an already bygone age. Both ‘straight’ society and ‘straight’ Christianity remain. The latter with its structures and organization not only intact but, if anything, stronger than ever.

So what happened to ‘revolutionary Christianity’? What happened to the movement which promised to throw off the shackles of organized religion and replace them with the unfettered. ‘liberation faith’ of Jesus? They failed to represent God… that’s what happened.

No man has a mandate to initiate anything in the name of Jesus just because he sees a need. Moses tried to do that when be killed the Egyptian who was beating the Hebrew.

When God’s people are being used and abused by their religious leaders, the need may be obvious enough, but which of us can move to meet it with the assurance that we are representing God? None but those who are’ called by God to do so.

Jesus was a saviour – a liberator – of God’s people, yes. But not merely because He was moved by their need. Rather it was because God sent Him for that purpose.

God’s oppressed people can only be set free by the men He appoints and sends. Anyone else is self-styled, self-appointed and is neither a representative of God nor a reflection of His heart.

God’s men are those who set out, not to replace an organized system with a disorganized one, nor to tear down that which they cannot rebuild, but to confidently proclaim God’s word of freedom to His captive people. They are the ones whose ‘feet are beautiful’ but not merely because of their message, but because of the one who sent them: “… how can they preach unless they are sent?” (Romans 10:15).

For many today, imprisoned within Christianity’s multitudinous prisons and groaning under the system’s yoke, there is an assurance: God hears their cry. He has never failed to do so. What’s more, He is moving to deliver them from their religious captivity. Not through wild-eyed revolutionaries nor through opportunist preachers, but through sent men – called and chosen by Him to lead His people into their God-given purpose and fulfilment.

God has always led humanity through humans. The sad part about it is that many have not wanted to be led by the men He sends – anymore than the Hebrews liked being led by Moses or the people of Jesus’ day chose to follow Him.

Yet there is no alternative. It is pointless and futile to cry out to God to free you from the yoke of slavery and then to reject the man He sends into your life in answer to your prayer.

Those God sends come not as learned men. They claim to be experts in nothing, other than in representing God. That alone is their role and that alone is their responsibility.

Moses, that great deliverer of God’s people, had no plan other than to fulfil his calling as God’s representative. He had no idea about the Red Sea incident until it happened. Even the manna from heaven took him by surprise (you’d think he would have at least checked with God as to how the people were to be fed!). He was not qualified by what he did or did not know. His only credentials were that he was the man chosen by God to lead His oppressed people out of slavery and into freedom. For their part, those Hebrew slaves simply needed to recognize, trust and follow Moses and the God who sent him.

For those who are unwilling to recognize, trust and follow, however, God’s way of freedom appears more like a threat than a deliverance.

The Israelites who followed Moses out of Egypt soon began to hanker after the ‘benefits’ of their former lives (what short and deceptive memories they had!). They refused to recognize what God was doing for them. They despised their God-sent deliverer and rejected His leadership. Finally they turned their backs on the land which was to be their ultimate place of freedom and fulfilment. By their own foolish choice they ended up dying in the desert when they could have been living in the Promised Land.

God’s way of freedom is not one of lawlessness and license. It cannot be attained by rebellion (for God places rebellion in the same category as witchcraft) and it always involves trust in the man God sends. And it is often rejected by the very ones who not only need to be set free, but who are desperately crying out for it.

The people loved it when Jesus tore into the Scribes and Pharisees, but they hated It when he began to place demands on them. He desperately wanted to lead them out of religious slavery and into true liberty. Yet, when it finally came down to it, they rejected Him and ran back into their former prison – while the Scribes and Pharisees stood by the prison door, rattling their keys and smiling smugly at the prisoners’ return.

This time, though, it was not those corrupt leaders who were the real problem. It was, instead, the very ones Jesus came to set free from their grasp. Had the people responded to the man God sent to them, that Judaistic religious prison would have lost many of its inmates for good. They had met the man and they had heard His word. Like the Israelites of old they had stood at the border of the Promised Land and then rejected it in favour of a futile, deprived existence.

Jesus’ heart was broken over those people. He saw them ‘as sheep without a shepherd’ while they, for their part, rejected His love. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” He agonised, “you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often have I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!”

God’s desire is the same as it has ever been: to have for Himself a people in whom He can be glorified and through whom He can be expressed. A people with whom He can enjoy the closest intimacy and who will find their highest fulfilment in their relationship with Him and with one another.

His desire to set His people free is not an end in itself. We are freed from the falseness of Christianity so as to enter into the fullness of the way of Jesus.

It is not enough to be acutely aware of your state of religious captivity. Neither is it enough to desire freedom for its own sake. It is only enough when you want what God wants: to be led by the man of His choosing into the way of His choosing. This is not freedom to please yourself, it is freedom to please God.

The more I see of the corruption, the abuses and the distortions in Christianity, and the more I am aware of the plight of its victims, the more I am convinced of how great the need is for God’s people to be set free to truly be God’s people. This is the desire God has placed within my heart; it is the calling He has put upon my life, and it is also the living reality which exists among the people who comprise the Outreach International family of churches.

God passionately wants to set His people free – so let the cry for freedom come!  But let it come only from the lips of those who are willing to be led into God’s freedom in God’s way … and on God’s terms.