The International Herald Tribune is printed in Zurich rather than Paris now, but it continues to be spread throughout Europe daily with a wide variety of American and international news, so that one can sit on the top of a snow-covered Alp in the midst of a blizzard and become suddenly informed as to what has been going on in the last hours, days, or months in very distant parts of the world. Amazing how human beings take all this rather for granted! My eyes were looking out at peaks almost 11,000 feet high, my body was sitting in the warmth of a heated room with snow blowing wildly against the window panes at an altitude of about 7,000 feet, but my mind was off in the midst of a situation in an African country, which consists of a tiny grouping of islands, horrified with what that particular day’s paper had reported. Facts were listed including the statistics that 300,000 people make up this country which a few years ago became “free.” The “freedom” was demanded, suggested, by various people, and then given by the French government. The “freedom” from French rule has produced in something like five years, statistics which lumped in this report gave facts such as “There are only three doctors left to serve 300,000 people.” “Fifty per cent of all children born die before they are five years old.” “The last dentist left the country two years ago.” “The per capita annual income is the lowest in the world, $60 a year.” The article went on to tell of the age of those who are ruling the country. Voting age commences at fourteen, and some of the officials are seventeen and eighteen years old. An official from a foreign country came to offer aid, but the two teenage officials he was given to talk to could neither read nor write, and he found it impossible to communicate with them so he left with his mission not accomplished.
The snow flakes whirled in dizzying patterns as the wind blew, but my mind whirled with the twisting patterns human beings have made as they have blown about the word “free” into blizzard-like drifts, changing what it would have been without the storm power of false winds. I thought of the people who had ranted and raved, insisted and pushed, screamed and forced, and had “won.” Not for themselves, but for so many thousands of other people whom their victory had affected, they had won freedom to be miserable, freedom to suffer, freedom to be without medical help, freedom to be ruled by uneducated teenagers, freedom to be ignorant of nutrition or medicine, freedom to be without education in any area, freedom from knowledge, freedom from ever being exposed to truth, freedom to be tortured or killed by the whims of whoever had sudden power. How destructive can “freedom” be? The destructiveness of “freedom” stares at us from the newspapers daily!
What a brillant screen is the word ‘free’ to hide the misery of final destruction.
Am I trying to say that colonial rule has ever been anything close to perfect? A thousand times no, but so many hundreds of thousands of people in the world are being spilled out of the frying pan into the fire, to sizzle without the “spiller” caring a whit, and the spilling process is being piously labeled, “the giving of freedom.” No matter what results are, the use of the word “free” satisfies those who scan the verbal camouflage without examining the reality of what is really there under the screen of words. What a brilliant screen is the word “free” to hide the misery of destruction.
The destructive twist to the meaning of the word “freedom” commences in the hearts of people. Come a moment to a serious discussion I was having with a twentieth-century young man when he nodded his head and proclaimed with a strident certainty, full of unrecognized human pride and egoism, “I understand the teaching. My questions are answered—but how can I bow? I can’t bow. I want not only to go on in an interesting life in my own will, but I want to continue comparing one teaching and another. I enjoy the search. If I bow, that freedom will be over.” It was really a cry of wanting the freedom to be “master of my own soul,” or the freedom to be an observer, a critic, a reporter making judgments from a vantage point of being uninvolved, free to theorize continually, freedom to be a critic of true truth, to listen to God speak and consider it with the attitude of a columnist reporting last night’s opera. What he had was the same thing as the people of that island nation of Africa—the word was freedom, the reality was misery. Freedom from God is everlasting misery.
Jesus speaks clearly to the Jews who had believed him, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31, 32, NIV). There are discussable theories as to what path needs to be taken for freedom to be real under human governments, but true freedom is meant to be a cutting of chains and a substitution of something that will not disappoint, that will not destroy, but that will give a constructive fulfillment that is lasting.
