Today I want to focus on our first reading, from Galatians, because in this well-known passage I believe that the Apostle Paul has given us an important map for our spiritual journey – a map which zeroes in on three essential biblical principles.
Spiritual principle number one: You and I are called to be free - we are called to a life of spiritual freedom. And in this passage from Galatians, Paul says it boldly and clearly. “For freedom Christ has set us free. Brothers and sisters,” he says, “you were called to freedom.” But, it is important to say here at the beginning, that the biblical understanding of freedom is very different from our general cultural understanding of freedom. Because, I would say, in our culture, the practical definition of freedom runs as follows: it is the freedom to have endless options – the freedom to have infinite choices. As one former President put it, “America is a great and free country because we can choose from 39 different flavors of ice cream.” Actually, now it is more than 39 flavors, so by that measure we have even greater freedom. Obviously that is freedom of a sort, but it is not the freedom of which scripture speaks. In our culture we tend to think of freedom as the freedom to satisfy all our desires, to have or do whatever we want, whenever we want to. However, as Paul warns us right here in Galatians, this is committing the dangerous mistake of using freedom for mere self-indulgence. And, as he goes on to say, the way of self-indulgence is a way that actually leads to further bondage. We’ll come back to that. In contrast to self-indulgence, Paul offers the true spiritual freedom that comes only through self-discipline and self-control. Which is a very different kind and quality of freedom.
And here is a second difference in the biblical view of freedom. In our hyper-individualistic culture, we tend to understand freedom in purely individual terms, being free from other people, free and disconnected from the obligations of human relationships and community. We tend to understand freedom as the condition of being unencumbered by and uncommitted to anyone or anything beyond oneself - the freedom of the individual. In stark contrast, Paul offers a spiritual freedom marked by love and by mutual belonging to one another at the deepest possible level. It is not freedom from relationships or from community, but the freedom to love and be loved in relationships and in community. The way of freedom, as Paul puts it, in a deliberately shocking paradox is, “through love to become slaves or servants to one another,” this is the way to freedom, for in doing so, he says, we will fulfill God’s greatest commandment, to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
Now, how can the demands of such a self-giving love and our apparently unlimited responsibility to one another in community, how can this way of life be understood as freedom? Because, according to the Bible, this is our deepest nature, this is the way God made us. We are made for love - we are made for relationships – we are made for community. We are created in the very image of a God, who IS LOVE. This is the divine imprint we bear at the core of our being. We are made in the image of the Trinity of love, God in a community of persons, holy and one. It is this capacity for love, for intimate belonging and mutual service to one another, this is our deepest nature, our most authentic self. And when we are finally living in harmony, in alignment, with our deepest nature, with the divine image within us, we experience a profound sense of freedom. Freedom to be who and what God made us to be.
When we are living by the Spirit and walking by the Spirit, our truest nature, our deepest essence is revealed, in what Paul calls the “fruits of the Spirit,” namely love, joy, peace, and all the wonderful qualities of spirit that come along with those - patience, kindness, generosity, trust, gentleness, self-control. This is our deepest nature and our highest human capacity. Yes, we sin, but according to the Bible, God’s goodness at the heart of our humanity is planted more deeply within us than all that is wrong with us. By the grace of God and the gift of the Holy Spirit, it is this spirit of love, joy and peace that we find at the deepest core of our being. This is the quality of life God intends for us. This is the essence of the life God longs for us to share. Love, Joy, Peace, this is our divine inheritance as the children of God. This is what it looks like to live by the Spirit. This is what true freedom looks like. And this is the life we are invited, in Christ, to enjoy and share.
And, the degree to which we are not presently living a life marked by the fruits of the Spirit, by those qualities of love, joy and peace, this is the degree to which we are not yet free. The points at which our lives, instead of love, joy and peace, are bound up with persistent patterns of fear, anxiety, shame, anger, guilt, despair, compulsiveness, addiction, those are the points in our life where we are still in bondage. And this is the “yoke of slavery” of which Paul speaks in this passage.
“For freedom Christ has set us free. Therefore do not submit to a yoke of slavery.” Because, according to the Bible, God created us not for bondage but for freedom. And here is a good definition of freedom to ponder.1 We are free when we trust that, with God, everything we need for contentment is within us and available to us. This trust that, by the grace of God, everything we need for contentment is within us and available to us, this trust enables us to treasure the sacredness of the present moment. It draws us into a different experience of time - from an experience of scarcity and emptiness to an experience of abundance and the fullness of time. And in the sacred fullness of this present moment, in the presence of God, we are finally able to stop clinging to desires of the flesh and to begin letting go, trusting in the Spirit. Rather than cursing our frustrations and bemoaning our grief, we simply give them over to God. Our burdens lightened, we feel a spirit of thanksgiving and praise, and the aforementioned spirit of love, joy and peace in the presence of God. This is freedom: to savor and celebrate the life of wholehearted faith in Jesus Christ. This is freedom: to enjoy and celebrate life in the liberating power of God’s love. But, finding this quality of freedom in our daily lives requires our becoming much more aware of the attachments and addictions that tend to keep our souls in at least some measure of bondage on a day to day basis.
Which brings us to spiritual principle #2: Freedom is not an opportunity or an excuse for self-indulgence. Indeed, this is a tragic distortion of the meaning of freedom which is made naturally and repeatedly by that part of our being which Paul calls the flesh. Here we have the basic polarity in Paul’s thinking: flesh and spirit. And indeed, this is his basic map for the spiritual journey: the movement from bondage to freedom is the movement from flesh to spirit. But we need to be clear what he means by these terms. Because we tend to read Paul through the lens of Plato and Platonic dualism. And thus, we tend to hear Paul’s teaching as a split – a dualism between spirit and body, with the assumption that spirit is good and that body, physicality and sexuality, etc. are bad. I know as a boy raised in the Catholic tradition, I was certainly taught to be very suspect of my body, my physical desires, and my sexuality. But thank God, later in life I was happy to learn that this is not what Paul is saying at all. For the word translated as “flesh,” Paul uses the word “sarx.” This is not the word for body - the word for body is “soma.” Paul uses the word “sarx” because he means something very different than the body, physicality or sexuality.
One of the best versions of the New Testament in contemporary language is entitled The Message, by Eugene Peterson. Where our reading says, “Live by the Spirit, I say and do not gratify the desires of the flesh,” Peterson translates Paul as saying: “My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with the free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness.” Can you hear the difference? What is traditionally translated as “flesh,” Peterson translates as “the compulsions of selfishness” and “sinful self-interest.” And I believe Peterson has it exactly right. Paul is indeed saying that we do have to make a choice. But that choice is not between body and spirit, but the choice between the compulsions of selfishness, that narrow self-interest, and the expansive love of the Spirit which is our true identity “in Christ.” In the language of Thomas Merton, it is the choice between false self (small s) and true self (capital S).
When Paul speaks of sarx, he is referring to what we call the “false self” - that small, constricted, limited, self-centered, autonomous, defensive, defending, untransformed self which is the identity most people are living out of most of the time. It’s not a bad self, necessarily. It just doesn’t get it yet - it doesn’t get who we now are, by the grace and love of God, in Christ Jesus. So this false self tends to be very grasping, needy and insecure - filled with all sorts of desires, because its identity is always “out there” - always trying to find its identity in someone else or in something else. Because the false self, this sarx of which Paul speaks, does not live at home. And so, the “works of the flesh,” as listed by Paul, have this grasping, needy, conflicted, insatiable, addictive quality: listen to the words: “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry” – and then some that are even closer to home for most of us – “enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, and things like these.” Because, trapped in sarx, the false self, people are always trying to find themselves in some outer stimulation, in someone else’s response to us, in attachment to yet another outer experience, because they really do not yet know who they are in Christ, the True Self.2
And you know what is the biggest giveaway? The biggest giveaway that you are still living that small self, the flesh, the little you, is: how often to you take offense. Just begin to notice – how often and how easily do you take offense? Because the little self is constantly “offended” – insecure, needy, defensive. When you’re living in the big self – true self – centered in love, peace and joy – all that stuff just rolls off you – there isn’t much to hurt or to offend. But I know, when I am living in the false self, I am constantly noticing – who isn’t appreciating me, who isn’t noticing me, who isn’t giving me credit for this or that – it never stops. I am constantly and easily offended.2
According to Gerald May, who wrote the classic Addiction and Grace, the word “attachment” derives from an old French word meaning “nailed to.” We are born with an innate desire for God, but we lose our freedom and taste anguish when attachment deflects our innate desire for God and ‘nails it’ instead to specific people or processes, objects or substances, thereby creating addiction. And tragically, May continues, addiction makes idolaters of us all, because ultimately it forces us to worship these objects of attachment, thereby preventing us from truly, freely loving God and loving one another.
You know you are attached, or “nailed,” when you become obsessed with something. It often happens subtly. Say, for example, your work becomes very important to you. The more time and energy you devote to work, the more emotional needs and material desires it fulfills. You feel approval, affirmation, so you make more and more sacrifices to increase your success. But one day you come to realize that you have virtually no life and no identity apart from your job. You have become a workaholic. I know of which I speak. And while I am alluding to some of my own attachments and addictions today, I invite each of you to reflect on some of the attachments and patterns in your own life that keep your “life energy” nailed to various things other than the love, joy and peace God intends for your life.
Of course, there are a variety of substance addictions: obviously alcohol, food, drugs, caffeine, sugar, nicotine. Money and power may be two of the most powerful drugs in the world today. There are also a variety of process addictions. For example, some people are literally addicted to worrying. They worry compulsively. It’s as though they need something to worry about all the time. And if they don’t have something, they will find or create something. It’s like you don’t know what to do unless you have some problem to be worried and anxious about. And then, once you find something to worry about, you feel like yourself again and you kind of know how to maneuver your way through the day - from one anxiety to the next. That’s just an example of a common process addiction. I hope I’m not stepping on anyone’s toes.
But, while I’m at it, I’ll step on my own. Some people are literally addicted to approval. Emotionally they need a steady flow of praise and appreciation - otherwise they feel like they have no self worth. They will often work themselves into a state of absolute exhaustion trying to do all the things that impress and please other people and elicit the approval they feel they need literally to survive from day to day. And, of course, if they get 99 words of appreciation and praise, but one negative comment, guess what one comment they will spend the rest of the day or the rest of the week thinking about?
There are many different forms of attachment and addiction, but there is a common problem underlying all of them. We become attached because we fear emptiness. There is, at the heart of the human condition, a certain emptiness, a yearning, an open incompleteness. Now as I have suggested many times before, that emptiness, that yearning in our heart is there for a reason. There is a God-shaped hole at the center of every human soul. And God has placed this yearning, this emptiness, there to woo us into the divine embrace. As St. Augustine prayed, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are forever restless until they rest in thee.”
Which brings us to spiritual principle number 3: the way of true freedom is to live by the Spirit. Remember our definition of freedom. We are free when we truly trust that, with God, everything we need for contentment is already within us and available to us. Our problem is that we try to do something that is impossible, we try to fill our inner emptiness, we try to fill that God-shaped hole, from the outside, with the things of the world. This is the way of the flesh, and it never ultimately works. This is the way that leads to bondage and addiction because you cannot finally fill a God-shaped hole from the outside, with the things of the world. You’ve heard that song, “Looking for love in all the wrong places”? That is the way of the flesh - looking for God’s love where it cannot finally be found. In very simple terms, the way of the Spirit involves learning to let our inner emptiness be filled from within, by God, to let our inner emptiness be filled from within, with the things of God. This is the practice of prayer. This is the way of freedom. And in this freedom, we manifest the fruits of the Spirit, our true nature, which is a life whose human emptiness – that God-shaped hole – has been filled with the love, the joy and the peace that comes only from God.
It’s an ongoing process. But as you begin to live by the Spirit and walk by the Spirit, first of all you begin to experience freedom from that dreadful heaviness of life. You are freed from that heavy sense of life as a demand, life as a burden. You are freed from that relentless sense of pressure to meet the impossible demands of life. And instead, you begin to experience your life as a gift. Whatever time you are given, each day is a gift. Trusting that, with God, everything you need for contentment is within you, the whole mood of life becomes one of gratitude, praise, expectancy and freedom.
All of this is the work of the Spirit, and it takes place in the very depths of our being. When it happens, our true nature, our True Self, begins to emerge. That elusive thing we call the soul begins to shine forth. And that light within you, that Spirit of love, joy and peace, which before shone through only in spots, now begins to come through much more strongly and much more consistently, for more and more people to see.
This process of being reborn by the Spirit does not impose on our personality something that is alien to it; rather, it connects us with who we really are deep down. That which was always there, but has somehow been imprisoned, is brought forth - including that deeper, more tender part of our nature - which perhaps always embarrassed us or frightened us. It brings forth and frees our deep need for love and our capacity to love.
According to Paul, this is the greatest freedom of all - not freedom from, but freedom to - the freedom to love. It is the freedom to walk in this world without constantly being caught in the complex net of emotional wounds and needs all around you, and to offer yourself freely, without reserve. You are no longer worried about whether someone is going to like you or not like you, approve of or reject you. Your job is simply to love, your calling is simply to love. And you trust that God is pouring into your heart all the love you will need to fulfill this high calling. Walking by the Spirit, you discover the most wonderful freedom of all - the freedom to love.
When you are able to say, with your whole heart, mind, soul and strength, YES, I trust that God’s love really is enough to fill that God-shaped hole at the center of my life, then you will finally know and claim the amazing freedom for which Christ has set us free.
1. This section is adapted from the book Centered in God by E. D. Howard
2. Adapted from Richard Rohr’s tape series, “The Great Themes of Paul”