Sunday Service - 10 Oct 1943

At the very beginning of His ministry, in the synagogue at Nazareth, our Lord announced his programme of work. Part of the programme was to bring freedom to those who are in captivity. ‘He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives and to set at liberty them that are bruised’. We are to consider this evening the Christian idea of free will and human freedom. What is the nature of the freedom which our Lord came to give to the world and can give us still? These will be addressed under 3 headings; a) What is true freedom? b) Are there any restrictions on this freedom? c) How can we obtain true freedom?

First, let us be clear as to what true free will is. I think I can explain best what I want to say by means of an illustration. I want to place before you three types of students. The first type is in a college boarding house where there is a rising bell every morning at 6.15 when all students are expected to rise from their beds. He dislikes this rule most intensely. He gets up with the others because he is compelled to do so, but he would prefer to be free from this daily discipline. He envies the day-boy who is free from such discipline. Obviously the boy has no freedom in the matter of early rising. The second type is a day-boy who is not under any discipline. He is his own master. He goes to bed in the night with a wish to rise early in the morning, but when morning comes he is reluctant to leave his bed. When he goes to bed he is not certain what he would do in the morning and in the morning he does just as he feels. He goes to school unprepared with his work and blames himself for his lazy habits. He would like to be different, but he is not willing to discipline himself. He thinks he is free, but in reality he is a slave to his lazy habits. Unfortunately, this is the type of person who is looked upon as a free man by the unthinking world, but he has no free will. The third type is a student who has learned to discipline himself. He finds no difficulty in getting up in the morning. Early rising has become a habit with him and he enjoys it. It is this student who may be said who may be said to have gained freedom with regard to early rising. He has the freedom to do what he considers to be good for him. This is an example of true freedom. The popular idea of free will is that it means, “I am equally able to do either of two opposite actions.” For example, “I can equally speak the truth or tell a lie. The more undecided I am, the more freedom I have.” This is certainly a wrong idea. We are not really free when we are in a state of weakness or indecision. The man who is not quite sure beforehand whether he can resist any given temptation is not really free. A man goes along the road in a drunken state saying to himself that he is a free man. He does not care what other people think of him. He is free to go to the tavern and drink. He thinks he has a freedom which a total abstainer does not possess. But in reality, he

is a slave, a slave to the drink habit, while the man who is free from the drink habit has obtained true freedom. When the drunkard is sober he blames himself for his drink habit and very much wishes to be free from it. So we can see that we can be said to have free will only when we can do what we wish. In our best moments we wish only what is good for us. True freedom is the freedom to be the best that we can be. We are really free when we have formed habits that are good and helpful to us. God has given to every one of us a conscience. We know from experience that if we try to do something which our conscience does not approve of we will be miserable. True freedom is in the ability to do not just as we like, but what our conscience approves of . Again, God has given us what we may call the herd instinct – that deep inner urge in man which makes him to crave for society. Man needs the companionship and support of his fellowmen, and therefore he cares for their approval of his conduct. True freedom is not in the ability to do just as you please, but in the ability to do what society approves of. I think, generally, the majority of men and women in a society are on the side of goodness. When we speak of the approval of the conscience or of the approval of society, we are really thinking of the approval of God. True freedom, then, is not in the ability to do what we like, but in doing what God approves of. We are really free when we have built up habits of acting in accordance with the will of God which is equally the law of your own nature. By repeated acts of right choice, we form habits which help us to gain the right type of freedom. “Our wills are ours we know not how, Our wills are ours to make them thine.” The saint is the freest person on earth, not because he can do good and bad equally at will, but because he has fixed his in harmony with God’s will and is realising the purpose of God for his life. A man is free when he is free to do that in which alone he can find true satisfaction. I have spent time in trying to explain what true freedom is. Before we consider how this freedom may be obtained, I should answer a question that would arise in the minds of all of us. That question is to what extent is our freedom limited. That is the second subject for consideration. People have sometimes argued that man is the victim of his environment and that all his actions are really determined by external forces. Though it is true that our actions are influenced by external forces and that our freedom of choice is limited, the power of choice is still ours and it is not entirely determined by external forces. It is good for us to know that our freedom is restricted in many ways. We sometimes speak of the freedom of the mind as the typical picture of freedom – how the body can be imprisoned, and yet the mind may be free to soar. One thinks of the imaginative mind of the poet or the novelist. Bunyan, for example, was imprisoned in Bedford Gaol, but his mind was free to follow the adventures of his hero on his way to the Celestial City. But even in the mental sphere, our freedom is limited. Is there not a difference between a man of no education or intelligence and another man of culture and education in the way they look at the world, the way they look at life and its problems and in the way they think in all matters. We are victims of our lack of education, lack of opportunity, lack of vision and of insight and lack of many other things. So even in our mental sphere, we are not absolutely free. We think in the way we have been brought up. It is the same in the moral sphere. Our freedom to choose the good is restricted by our inherited prejudices and lack of insight. Several decades ago, good Christian men did not consider it wrong to buy and sell slaves. Their sense of right and wrong

and their freedom of choice were restricted by the narrow religious and social outlook of their day. They failed to see how inhuman slave trade was. A hundred years hence, the future generations will condemn our apathy towards social evils of our day as vigorously as we would condemn slavery and similar evils of the past. Yes, our power of choice in the matter of our conduct is limited at any time by many things – our environment, our training, our past actions, bad habits, inherited weaknesses and the like. But though our power of choice is limited, we are not entirely the victims of external forces. We have still the power of selecting and making up our minds and acting accordingly. Now, we come to the third subject. How can we obtain true freedom? I have already spoken about the formation of habits as a condition of our freedom. No habit can be formed unless we are willing to submit ourselves to discipline, either self-discipline or discipline exercised by others. True freedom can be won only by first accepting a kind of bondage. Consider the revolt of youth against authority. We must first be willing to become ‘slaves’ to rules which are imposed on us by others or by ourselves. The object of all our rules in schools is not to deny our boys their freedom, but to enable them to have their true freedom. There is a lovely parable of Rabindranath Tagore which may be quite appropriate to mention here. He said, “I have on my table a violin string. It is free to move in any direction I like. If I twist one end, it responds; it is free. But it is not free to sing.” “So, “ he said, “I take it and fix it onto my violin; I bind it, and when it is tuned it is free for the first time to sing.” When it is bound, it is free to show forth its best. What a fool a man would be if he took a sailing ship on the great ocean and said, “ I am not going to be bound by a pilot or a compass or a chart; I am free to sail the seas.” His voyage would be short and he would soon be at the bottom of the sea. When he is ‘enslaved’ by the compass and the chart and the stars, and by the pilot who stands at his side and tells when to change his direction, when to drop anchor, when to let sail down, when to pull sail up, then within that ‘bondage’ he finds freedom. ‘Make me a captive, Lord, And then I shall be free.’ The Christian gospel is such that if we want to obtain true freedom, we must place ourselves entirely in the hands of Jesus. St. Paul who spoke so much about liberty called himself the ‘the bond-slave of Jesus Christ’. Jesus announced that he came to give release to the captives. Many of us are slaves to bad habits and thus have lost our freedom. If we surrender ourselves to Jesus, He will give us the strength to be free from the power of evil habits. We do pray often for a new outlook, a changed life and a new freedom, but we are not ready to offer our wills to God. God’s grace can work in us only in union with our free will. God never gives us His grace to save us trouble. God does nothing for us that we can do for ourselves. He helps those that help themselves. If we offer our wills to God and give Him the charge of our wills, then we will have true freedom: ‘Make me a captive, Lord,

And then I shall be free; Force me to render up my sword And then I shall Conqueror be.’