Freedom

Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:34-36)

 

          I’m reading an interesting book called Destroyer of the gods by Larry W. Hurtado, and I’m learning a few things about the Roman society of the first and second century AD that I didn’t know.

          For instance, part of Roman culture required that every time you entered someone’s home and possibly even their places of business, you were expected to honor their lares (household gods, including ancestors.) To refuse to do so was considered rude. There were temples along the roads. In effect, there were “gods” everywhere.

          As a member of your family, you were required to honor the family lares. As a resident of the city, you were expected to honor the gods the city promoted. As a Roman, you were expected to honor whatever gods the Roman emperor declared that you should. It did not matter what you believed about the gods involved. You were welcome to add to the list, but not subtract.  To refuse to participate put the household, the city, or the empire at risk of incurring the gods’ wrath, which meant that it incurred the wrath of the family, city, or emperor.

          Religion, for the Roman world, was not something you did once a week for an hour or two. It was interwoven through everything you did.

          The Jews were given something of a special dispensation. They angered people because they tended to refuse to honor the multitude of gods everyone else honored, but it was seen as a Jewish thing. The only people who did that were born Jews or became Jews.

          But imagine, in the years following 33AD, a growing group of people saying, “Nope, sorry, those beings aren’t gods and I’m not going to participate.” Imagine being one of those people who said, “I believe in the Creator God and I’m not going to worship gods I don’t believe in.” Had it been a Jewish thing that Jewish people did, that might have been tolerated, but these folks included Gentiles, members of families, cities, and empires that expected “normal” (Non-Jewish) people to participate in order to keep the gods from taking revenge.

          Becoming a Christian took courage. It could take standing up to one’s family and running the real chance of being disinherited and thrown out. It could require facing the lions in the arena. Being a Christian meant you were free from all those other gods. That’s the sort of freedom Jesus gives us, but then as now, freedom isn’t free. It could and did sometimes cost those who gained it everything they had.

          It’s unfortunate that some traditions continued the concept of the lares. True Christianity continues to be countercultural. It sets us free from the unending demands of the world, replacing them with one law: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love your neighbor as  yourself. We are called to be free. Don’t enslave yourselves again.