I am pretty well finished writing another book. The topic this time is the meaning of freedom from a Biblical perspective.
One of the things I’ve been wrestling with is the fact my freedom is restricted by the people around me. You could say “Welcome to the pandemic!” But it’s more the case that the pandemic has provided an opportunity to find out something the Bible teaches but we often ignore because we don’t like it.
There’s an intriguing paragraph tucked in at the end of Acts 2. It gives a brief description of the first church in Jerusalem. I wish it were longer, but I suspect God kept it short because he didn’t want everyone to try to make an exact replica out of it. But the principles listed there are important.
It starts with this statement: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
For the past year governments around the world have been trying to control a public health emergency by curtailing liberties most of us would never have thought we would have to give up.
In an authoritarian state like China, the government simply imposes what measures it wants and people have to submit. In democratic nations, it’s a little harder than that. You have to persuade people to go along.
Pressure reveals the person.
It’s always when things are tough and the stress piles on that what’s underneath emerges.
When all our kids were young and I was running a church office out of my home, the phone often rang right in the middle of some kind of family pandemonium. Our daughter Anna used to yell “Quiet!” at the top of her lungs, then in the ensuing moment of silence would pick the phone up with an ultra-competent voice saying, “Campbell’s. How can I help you?” No one ever knew what had been going on a split second before.
