In one of Jesus’ very first public statements, he proclaimed
that his primary mission was to set people free. Why, then, do so
many Christians feel trapped in their relationships, their job,
their indebtedness, their daily routine, and life in general?
In one of Jesus’ very first public statements, he proclaimed that his primary mission was to set people free. Why, then, do so many Christians feel trapped in their relationships, their job, their indebtedness, their daily routine, and life in general?
Think about all the different kinds of prisons we find ourselves in: There is the prison of guilt (which is quite often over something we should not feel guilty about), the prison of the past (many of us carry enough emotional baggage to start our own luggage store), the prison of low self-esteem (entered by having a false idea about who God made us to be), the prison of perfectionism (from which we make ourselves and everyone around us miserable because the standard is never met), the prison of fear (characterized by an undue feeling of distress about circumstances and reflected in an unwillingness to take risks) the prison of rules (the false belief that if one lives by all the rules, everything will be fine, but as Jay Kesler once noted, “If being a Christian means observing all the rules, the best Christian in my house is the dog!”).
The list of prisons goes on and on, and few of us are free of their debilitating influence. Why? Consider the following story taken from C.S. Lewis’ allegory, The Lion and The Wardrobe:
A child named Lucy asks Aslan the Lion (who represents Christ, the Lion of Judah) to help some dwarfs. They were already in Narnia (which represents God’s kingdom), but they think they are still back on earth in a stable. They refuse to see the beauty of Narnia, so Lucy asks Aslan to help them.
Aslan replies, “Dearest, I will show you both what I can, and can not do.” He came close to the Dwarfs and he gave a long growl.
But the Dwarfs said to one another, “Hear that? That’s the gang at the other end of the stable. Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don’t take any notice. They won’t take us in again!”
Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared before the Dwarfs, and each had a goblet of good wine in his hand. But it wasn’t much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn’t taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable.
One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had got a bit of an old turnip and a third said he’d found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said, “Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey’s been at! Never thought we’d come to this.”
But very soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching and soon there was a fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes and trodden under foot.
But when at last they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding noses, they all said, “Well, at any rate there’s no humbug here. We haven’t let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs!”
“You see,” said Aslan, “they will not let us help them. They’ve chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison, and so afraid of being taken in that they can not be taken out. But come children, I have other work to do.”
Jesus came to set us free, but what does it really mean to be “free in Christ?” The story by Lewis offers us some fascinating insight on our own lives. The dwarfs were in a totally unnecessary prison – a prison of the mind; a prison that God never intended.
Could it be that we are very much like those dwarfs? Could we be mistaking the Kingdom of God for a stable? As we explore the subject over the next few weeks, God’s answer may just surprise you!
