Who’s More Liberated: the Christian or the Non-Believer? – Special Report (Part 1 of 2)

Who’s More Liberated? (Part 1 of 2)

When some people leave the Christian faith, or deny God altogether, they often say things like, “I feel so liberated. Now I’m free!” We hear this so often in our discussions with Atheists we thought we would delve into the question: Who is more liberated and free: the Christian or the Non-Believer?

We also must answer the questions, why did the Christian not feel liberated and free in the first place? And, what went wrong in their instruction for them to feel otherwise? Read on.

For the sake of clarity, let’s define Christians as true Christ-followers and the non-believers as everyone else (including those who say they follow Christ, but in every other respect they think, talk, and behave no differently than the rest of the world).

Now the question is who is more liberated. Dictionary.com defines liberation in these ways:

• to set free, as from imprisonment or bondage
• to free from control by a foreign or oppressive governing body
• to free from social or economic constraints or discrimination

So we have this word … liberated. On it seems to hang the balance of the Christian faith versus all other forms of faith or even the absence of faith. Many of us who are Christ-followers could give testimonies of being freed from an imprisoning bondage.

To help us understand bondage and liberation more clearly, let’s go back in time and look at the most recent example in our history…the slavery and liberation of African Americans in the USA.

History of U.S. Slavery

The United States of America has an ugly history of slavery that revolves around the black Africans. They were slaves in the U.S. and went through a valiant battle for their freedom. But when they got it, things didn’t quite go as they — or anyone else expected.

History tells how Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to start the process of eventually freeing all of the slaves in the country. When he first signed it, many of them didn’t automatically begin to live free. There were a variety of reasons for this.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was the slaves who didn’t want to be free. They had masters (i.e. slave owners) whom they saw as decent and reasonable. They figured they had a pretty good life as slaves … and they weren’t willing to trade it for an unknown life of freedom. So they continued as voluntary slaves.

But the majority of slaves who didn’t live free when they were legally free had much more tragic stories. In some cases, the slave owners didn’t want them to know they were free. So they hid the truth from them, and blocked the slaves from having any knowledge that they were free. In other cases, there were slaves who knew they were free … but their masters (i.e., owners) lied to them and told them they were still slaves.

In some instances, slaves found out they were free and tried to live free. But their former masters (i.e., owners) would coerce them into continuing to live as slaves. Usually this would happen when they tried to leave the plantation where they had been enslaved. The former master (i.e., owner) would chase after them. When he caught them, they were beaten and dragged back to the plantation to continue living as slaves.

Now whose story would you consider to be more tragic? The slaves who knew they were free, but had benevolent masters and voluntarily surrendered their freedom? Or the slaves who continued to live as slaves because of their own ignorance or because of oppression? Most of us, if we’re truthful, would probably agree that the slave who had a benevolent master and wished to continue serving him might have had the happiest ending here.

Human Slavery vs. Liberty

The point is that just because the world (and the law) defined them as free didn’t mean that all of America’s slaves actually lived any differently. It took something else. They each had to claim their freedom. They each had to access and appropriate their freedom. Sometimes that took a fight. It often took courage. They were plunging into a life of unknown outcomes. Few, if any, black Africans had ever lived free in American society. Nobody knew how that would look or how it might turn out.

There are some very strong similarities in this story and the modern concept of liberty. I have worked for years in a recovery ministry called Celebrate Recovery.  It operates on many of the principles of secular twelve-step programs, but uses Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) as the basis for its core tenets. Its objective is to free people from the bondage of addictions, compulsive behaviors and other hurts, habits and hang-ups that keep us from living the lives that God intended.

Inevitably, the people who participate in that recovery ministry have stories that are characteristic of the American slavery experience from the 1800’s. At first, they believe they are free. As adults they can make supposedly free choices to do things like abuse alcohol or use pornography. At the beginning of their relationship with these vices, they believed that being able to choose to do these things was a right or freedom that they were simply exercising. But in the end – when they sought help from a recovery ministry – most have no trouble admitting that the vice which they thought represented freedom and liberty had indeed enslaved them.

As I’ve worked in this program, I’ve been able to make a rather odd observation. It occurs when the participant starts to walk in true freedom. Invariably, they will come upon a major milestone in life, such as Christmas. And as they do, they will make a comment that goes something like this: “I’m a bit nervous about Christmas this year. It’s the first year I can remember where I was sober. The truth is, I don’t know how to do Christmas sober. So I’m afraid. What will Christmas be like?”

What they’re really saying of course is that they don’t know how to do Christmas free. They don’t know how truly liberated people live at Christmas or how they celebrate Christmas. It’s a whole new paradigm for these people. And it goes without saying that you could plug any holiday or milestone, Easter, wedding, anniversary, family reunion, etc. into that sentence and get the same effect. People don’t know how to do life free.

Freedom & Liberation

I suspect the same may be true of Christianity. There may be people who are trapped in bondage. They may be aware of the Lord. And they may believe that He exists. But they don’t really know Him. And because they are ignorant of what His freedom looks like, they are willing to settle for what they have. They aren’t particularly interested in knowing how others live.

To these people, liberation is an intimidating proposition … that they aren’t so willing to embrace. They know how to live with what they’ve got. They’ve developed coping mechanisms that, in their opinion, work. And because they don’t know how anything else works — they fear the unknown. Moreover, they are unwilling to walk into that unknown. What if the Lord doesn’t meet me there? What if I don’t know how to act? What if I can’t handle it? Their minds are filled with those “What if …?” statements.

The real issue for most people in bondage then is realizing what freedom looks like. How do truly liberated people really live? Most of us would agree that people who are truly free in life probably live lives that aren’t encumbered by some of the boundaries that the rest of us must live with.

Rich people, for example, aren’t bound by the need to work. They aren’t bound by insufficient funds to satisfy whatever whim may strike them. Go anywhere. Buy anything. Do anything. That is our perception of what freedom looks like.

But ask people who live that kind of life. More often than not, they’ll tell you that wealth is a burden. They’ll tell you that it taints their relationships. Maybe they’re afraid to get too close to people, for example, out of fear that those people are only after their money (versus their friendship). Maybe they find themselves arguing about money – or being afraid to lose it (because they don’t know how to be poor).

I counseled a man once, who sat in my office at the church and sobbed about what an immense burden his wealth was. He hated the mansion and saw it as a prison. He loathed riding in the limousine – and yearned for the ability to just drive around town by himself. He believed that his immense wealth had ruined his kids’ lives.

So the point here is that the concept of being free, or being liberated, tends to be both subjective and abstract. By that I mean that the truth of worldly freedom tends to be relative … it is designed by its circumstances. At the same time, the world’s definition of freedom is so abstract that few can really comprehend or attain it.

Read Part 2 for the rest of the story…