The
Inner Captivity of We Who Are Free
.
. .
. and what we can do about it
.
by Sam Williamson
We’ve been remade through a re-birth; we’ve
become new creations and given new
hearts; and the walls that imprisoned us have
been bulldozed. And yet . . . we still fear
our bosses, speak harshly to friends, dwell on
anxious thoughts, and obsess about ourselves.
Why is that?
Years
ago I read an article written by a counselor
who worked with concentration camp victims
shortly after World War II. The sheer breadth
of the war’s destruction restricted the
Allies’ ability to help feed and shelter
people, so refugee camps were built for the
victims.
The counselor noted that many of the victims
in the refugee camps acted as though they were
still in prison. While they had been freed
from the camps, they asked permission for the
smallest liberties, such as a nighttime stroll
outside their dormitories. The therapist made
this observation:
We
took the victims out of the camps in an
instant,
but it may
take decades before the camps are taken out
of the victims.
Their story
is our story. God has opened the prison doors
on the outside, but we still need him to free
us from the prisons walls within.
The inner prison dilemma
Do you ever wonder why we still do what we do?
We’ve been given new hearts, but we ignore our
friends or we bristle at their tiniest
correction of us; or we scratch and claw for
recognition or succumb to that enticing
temptation for the seventeenth time this
month. Or week.
When we recognize how badly we just acted,
what is our typical reaction? We either try
self-speak or we despair. (Unless, of course,
we simply refuse to admit the pain we inflict
on others.)
First we try to buoy up our sinking spirits
with an inner, positive pep-talk. We say:
“I’ve been born again,” “I have a good heart,”
or “I’ve been baptized in the Holy Spirit.”
Our self-talk works for a time, but the
feelings don’t last. And pretty soon we’re
criticizing our spouse again.
Or we despair when we read, “If we say we have
fellowship with him while we walk in darkness,
we lie and do not practice the truth” (1 John
1:6). We honestly acknowledge the darkness of
our walk—and the pain it causes others—and we
stagger into gloom.
The concentration camp counselor experienced
the same problem with the concentration camp
victims. She repeatedly told them that the
camps were demolished and that they were free.
Yet the former prisoners continued to defer to
the therapists as though they were prison
guards.
Like us at times, when the pep-talks failed,
the therapist despaired.
And then . . .
One day a maimed Allied soldier visited the
refugee camp to find a long lost cousin. When
the former prisoner saw his cousin’s
debilitating wounds, something inside just
broke. He whispered, “You suffered for me?
You sacrificed your body to set me free?”
The therapist noticed an instant change in
the former prisoner: he stood taller, he acted
less subservient, he took more initiative, and
he smiled more. Inner walls had begun to
crumble.
The therapist began to ask other grievously
wounded soldiers to share their own stories of
hard-fought battles, and she took busloads of
former prisoners to Allied gravesites. And bit
by bit, victim by victim, inner prison doors
began to open. What they had only heard about
became real.
The former victims shook off victimhood, and
their fears morphed into peace.
So what does this have to
do with us?
Sometimes all we need is a gentle reminder of
the truth: We’ve been made into new
creatures with God-given hearts and the gift
of God’s Spirit dwelling within us.
But usually we need that truth to penetrate a
little deeper, for its roots to reach our
inner being, to be captured again by the love
of the one who set us free. We need it to
become real. It’s his love that frees us (over
and over) not our self-talk.
The way to gain inner freedom is to visit his
gravesite and gaze on the wounds of The
Soldier who set us free. It’s not the
self-proclamations of “I’m free” and “I’ve
been made new” that we need; at least not as
much as a deep heart knowledge of the love of
the one who did it.
We need to know the love of Jesus. It’s what
set us free in the first place, and it’s what
continues to set us free from our inner
prisons. John Donne wrote a sonnet that
answers our need for inner freedom. He ends it
with,
Take me to you,
imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Sam
© Copyright 2014, Beliefs
of
the Heart, Ltd. All rights reserved.
 Sam
Williamson grew up in Detroit, Michigan,
USA. He is the son of a Presbyterian pastor
and grandson of
missionaries to China. He moved to Ann
Arbor, Michigan in 1975. He worked in London
England from 1979 to 1982, helping to
establish Antioch,
a member community of the Sword of the
Spirit. After about twenty-five years as an
executive at a software company in Ann Arbor
he sensed God call him to something new. He
left the software company in 2008 and now
speaks at men’s retreats, churches, and
campus outreaches. His is married to Carla
Williamson and they have four grown children
and a grandson. He has a blog site, www.beliefsoftheheart.com,
and can be reached at
Sam@BeliefsoftheHeart.com.
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