“Let my people go” was the Lord’s response to the Israelites heart cry as they groaned in their slavery in Egypt. Throughout history, the cry for freedom has gone out. Levi Coffin (1798 – 1877) was born into a Quaker family who were farmers in North Carolina. Quakers were people who belonged to the Religious Society of Friends, a movement within Christianity that began in England in the 1650’s. Their beliefs led them to respond to human suffering with compassion, regardless of race or religion. Both Levi’s parents and grandparents were opposed to slavery. As a young fifteen-year-old, he would talk to slaves to see if he could help them. In 1821 with his cousin, he opened a Sunday School for slaves, using God’s Word to teach them to read. As the oppression of slavery became greater, he and his wife Catherine moved to Indiana where African Americans could live in freedom. His home became the centre for coordination of the Underground Railway, which took runaway slaves in the darkness of night north to Canada. Levi’s courage had an impact on their neighbours, who began to provide active assistance in forwarding slaves on their way to freedom. During the day, families would hide them. These ‘stops’ to freedom became known as the Secret Underground Railroad Stations and Levi became known as its president. It is estimated that Levi and his wife helped more than 2000 slaves to freedom. One of these slaves was Eliza Harris, whose story is told in the book ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’.
Most people share the belief that freedom is key to human flourishing but have different ideas about what it is and how to realise it. In our culture, the most prevalent understanding is that freedom means doing what I want, and this autonomy means freedom from others, independence with no accountability and “a self-chosen rupture from creation, from the past … from earlier generations … and obligations of all kinds.” [1] In this way, we can be free to discover our inner self. Living in this current script deforms our lives in profoundly destructive ways. Big government, big Tech, big business and pornography’s ability to shape our inner worlds, is unlike any other time in history. The anxiety of choice and the overload of information has led to lostness and confusion.
Every day in the world of virtual reality, social media platforms enable our children to create an image, to project it and then try to live up to it. This is very different to the real messy world where the self is muddled, and life is difficult. Research shows that rather than finding freedom ‘to be yourself’, it is leading to enslavement. Having disconnected love from God’s relational design and the substitution of electronic devices for human contact, the result is consuming obsessions and erosion of moral character. These habits of the heart then flow out and impact our society. The person and society that cuts themselves off from God’s presence, experience the forces of chaos and coercion. For freedom without order leads to chaos and imposed order without freedom leads to control and enslavement, as in Egypt and in cancel-culture.
True freedom is a matter of the heart. Moses reminded the Israelites that the strength of their freedom from slavery to the Promised Land had to be passed onto the hearts and minds of each succeeding generation. Therefore, schooling in freedom is essential to sustaining freedom because education is a matter of character formation, as well as passing on our story across the generations.
Freedom is central to what God wants for His people – freedom from sin and idolatry and the freedom to love and be loved. “The true human identity comes from the True Human Himself: if the Son makes you free, you will be truly free …. (for) God’s love becoming human in Jesus and dying on the cross brings about new creation and invites each of us to inhabit it … Free people in a free world”. [2] Our story needs to engage in conscious tension with our cultural diagnosis.
As Christian teachers, we are to train our students to navigate life with each other. The heart of freedom is bound up in our whole-hearted love for the Lord and our love of neighbour, the stranger and our enemies. The Word of God speaks about loving relationships, commitments and trust. In our class and school culture, we are forming patterns that demonstrate that true freedom is not a licence to do as you like, but the freedom to love as you ought. This creates the moral responsibility of mutual obligation that in turn, creates ordered freedom in which all can flourish. It needs to be clearly demonstrated that they are individuals in community who can’t hope to live graciously with others while inventing their own moral framework. Trust based on shared beliefs is the glue that holds us together.
In our teaching and learning, we can assist our students to explore the nature of true freedom. Do our children know the story of the Western nations? Do they know the basis and meaning of the Australian constitution? Down through history, men and women who loved Christ above all else, were convinced that only the truth and power of the Gospel could set people free. This inspired their response to God’s call to set the captives free. We need to tell the stories of these men and women, such as William Wilberforce, Levi & Catherine Coffin, Amy Carmichael and Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration of Anzac Day, a war whose goal was to achieve freedom points to Christ, the ultimate sacrifice for true freedom. Throughout history, students can explore the consequences of the murderous tyrannies, such as Mao and Stalin, where God’s sovereignty and presence were rejected. Their power exercised in the arrogant belief they could change human nature and society, led to the enslavement and death of millions of people.
On a personal level, moral and sexual licence abuses humans, particularly women and children who are used as a means to an end. Power, not love, becomes the heart of human relationships. Every opportunity must be taken to affirm the humanity of each student in the school, of which they are a part; for true freedom is the freedom to love and nurture a community where dignity and respect characterise all relationships. Students must be aware of the Biblical beliefs and values and laws a nation needs to be built upon so that humans may flourish according to God’s design.
Celebration of what is good, confession, forgiveness and repentance are important practices that lead to restoration in our individual and communal lives, both personally and for the past. This transforms hearts and so forgiveness and freedom to choose the right path mean the future need not repeat the sins of the past for the chain of cause and effect can be broken. For only the redemptive work of Christ in human hearts can bring about true reconciliation and freedom. “Freedom begins and ends in the human heart, in the hearts of citizens and children, and all other attempts to find and fulfil it elsewhere are doomed to fail.”[3]
May we rejoice in our calling to unfold the Scriptures that give a transformational vision of human life, where every person has dignity, life is sacred and the notions of love, freedom, conscience and community are incomparable to any other story. As Irenaeus, the church father said, “A human being fully alive is the glory of God.” [4]
“So, if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
John 8: 36
Grace and Peace
The TEC Team
[1] Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity – Sinai’s Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom, (Illinois: Inter Varsity Press, 2021), 191.
[2] Nicholas Tom Wright, Broken Signposts – How Christianity Makes Sense of the World, (New York: HarperOne, 2020), 87-88.
[3] Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity – Sinai’s Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom, 179.
[4] https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com