Freedom isn’t what you think
Stop compromising.
Freedom isn’t what you’re thinking right now.
It’s not fireworks, BBQ, or even a meaningless tribute to the American armed forces deployed to locations most Americans couldn’t point to on a map.
It’s self-determination.
Nothing rips away freedom more than compromise.
You stay late at work to impress a terrible boss, and you waste your evenings doomscrolling or binge-watching Netflix.
You say yes to the invite. You bail out that friend. You stay in an emotionally abusive relationship.
I’ve done it all.
It’s not worth it.
Stop compromising.
My take: God’s promise is freedom, not the political kind, but the kind of spiritual suffering that the enemy delights in.
Throughout C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape emphasizes that the Enemy (God) wants humans to be truly free. But Hell’s strategy is these “little” compromises.
“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.”
Compromise (of the moral/spiritual kind) is death.
And we’ve all been there, having sold ourselves and justified a terrible decision. But I don’t believe death is final. Death (and again I’m talking about moral and spiritual death) was defeated.
Death was defeated.
Foiled.
Arrested.
When death was arrested, my life began.
Happy 4th ppl.
-Riley