ETHICS FOR MODERN CHRISTIANS OCTOBER 29, 1972

PART III - FREEDOM BETHANY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
DEUTERONOMY 6:4-9 LAFAYETTE, INDIANA
GALATIANS 2:15-16, 5:13-15 JOHN M. BUCHANAN

St . Augustine, one of the very important early church fathers and theologians,

Bishop of Hippo, lived near the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth.
Much of his writing is autobiographical, telling the story of how he - as a young man -
struggled with the Gospel: how he tried the life of a scholar, then the life of a libertine;
and how, finally, he returned to the church to become one of its leading thinkers. One of
the most significant things he ever said in the area of the Christian ethic was this decep-~
tively simple little sentence "Love, and then do what you please."

That statement reflects the Gospel as it has been presented by St. Paul. Writing to
the early Christian Community in Galatia, Paul said, "...no man is ever justified by doing
what the law demands ...you, my friends, were called to be freemen... For the whole law can
be summed up in a single commandment; 'Love your neighbor as yourself '"

That sentiment emerged in the history of the church - in a rather revolutionary way -
on the occasion we celebrate today, the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther rediscovered
the essence of the New Testament faith; namely, that Christianity is not a set of church
regulations and obligations: that the Christian life is not simply obeying the edjcts of the
Church. After years of personal turmoil and struggle Luther saw that Christianity begins with
an awareness of God's love for man: that God's love #s free - men can't earn it by doing
anything, even those things the Church said they should do. Luther saw and said that the
Gospel of Jesus Christ makes men f.ee; free from the oppressive rules of the Church: free to
make moral decisions on the basis of their own understanding of what God demands. And it is
significant that one of the first things he did when he had been expelled from the Church of
Rome was to take a wife who was, in fact, an ex-nun. Luther felt free to do something which
the Church had said was wrong, because he saw that living a Christian life has very little
to do with obeying a list of rules.

. If we are going to think about the topic "Ethics for Modern Christians", sooner or
later we must deal with the question of freedom. It's not an easy topic in and of itself.
In addition, it is not an easy topic because of the aeneral confusion and conflicting ideas

about freedom in our culture today. One man's freedom is another man's prison. To one

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segment of the population personal freedom keeps looking like moral anarchy. To another
segment of the population every law, custom, tradition and rule looks like an oppressiva
denial of individual liberty.

So, it is not an easy topic, but discuss it we must: for freedom lies very close to
th heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and needs to be buiit into any ethic which cails
itself Christian.

Jean Paul Sartre, a French philosopher who is an atheist and an opponent of the Churcn
has written widely about human freedom. Han is robbed of his freedom, Sartre suggests, if
he allows anything or anyonc to tell him who he is and what he should do. And in giving
up his freedom man is less than man. People need to determine their own identity: to
stand up and say “I am who I am": to decide autonomously what the good is and what my duty
4s and never to submit to the will of anyone else out of fear or superstition - whether
that someone else be God, the Church, the state, or one's own father.

That kind of freedom is, in Sartre's philosophy,a kind of curse. We are, in his
words, “condemned te freedom" : and in his writings and the works of other existentialist
philosophers freedom is pretty grim: the free man pretty unhappy. But we need to claim
it - if we are to be truly and fully men.

Now the irony of that is that Sartre intends to attack Christianity with it. And he
has generally succeeded in making churchmen defensive and nervous. The fact is that he
isn't attacking Christianity at ali. The French atheist is, in fact, repeating a funda-
mental and basic assertion of the Gospel - namely that men are meant to be free: that
true, God-given manhood has a very great deal to do with being free. What he is attacking -
and what needs attacking is the way the Church has persisted in denying that: the way
Christian men, in the name of Jesus Christ have all] too willingly given up the freedom
to be that makes them men.

Sartre is right when he suggests that freedom is a curse. It has always been easier
to live by someone else's rules. Life is certainly simpler in a totalitarian state than
in Democracy. If you take seriously your citizenship you are presonally aware that to
step into a voting booth and make a responsible decision is not an easy thing to do: in

fact, it is demanding. And life would be a whole Tot simpler if there were one slate

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presented and one candidate: for each office and no need to make a choice - to take a stand.
But in the anxiety of the voting beoth is the very essence of being a man in a Democracy.

Refugees From East Germany find the going pretty rough when they experience the open~
ness and lack of rigidity in West Germany. Some even go back to the security of a life
in which every step is prescribed and no decisions of importance have to be made.

In terms of religion there has always been a fascination with legalistic, rigid
structures. The Church itself has been guilty down through the years of squeezing theolo-
gical truth into creeds and confessicns and reducing Christian living to a narrow and rigid
set of rules. That's always been tremendously appealing. It is less demanding, and there-
fore more comforting, for the Church - cr the priest - or the minister - to dispense the
truth rather than act as enabler as people discover the truth for themselves. [It is more
comforting for the Church to issue a list of “Thou shait's and thou shalt not‘'s" rather
than insisting that men and women work their own way through the morass of moral complexity
present in modern lifc.

That approach to theology (what is true) and ethics (what is right) is becoming
extremely popular again tn our day. Tho Campus Crusade for Christ offers a little booklet
in which Christianity is reduced to “Four Spiritual Laws" which are repeated over and over
again. Young people are buying it by the thousands. In fact, the “Campus Crusade" ts the
one form of institutional religfon that is experiencing great growth today ~ with broad
support from many cf the traditional churches which seem te feel that anything that gets
college people to say the word Jesus, other than profanely, must be good. I can't accept
that. I keep running into a persistant thread of anti-legalism in the New Testament that
just won't allow it. I keep discovering in the Gospel the word of freedom: the word that
insists that God's children are called te be free.

Freedom is difficult. I'm not certain that it's accurate to say that we are “condemned"
to it : but I do believe that it is demanding andtherefore tempting te give up.

What usually happens to freedom - when it exists, is that it is either rejected by
people who can't stand the demands, or abused by peopte who see it as the opportunity to
do whatever they please. That was the problem to which Paul was addressing himself in

his letter to the Galatians. "You are called to be free men”, he told them, “only do not

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turn your freedom into license." That's exactly what they had done. Free from the
strictures of the law they felt that all the restraints were off. And things got pretty
racy for a while. In Corinth, men were even getting drunk at Communion.

The same thing happened after the Reformation. " You are saved by the Grace of God,
not by anything you do” Martin Luther said, And some people concluded that they were free
to do anything. Splinter groupsemerged, one of which Practiced a kind of communal marriage.
But that's not froedom.

In our own culture we are able te see how fragile and vulnerable Freedom is. We have
a free press in this nation. We also have abuse of that freedom in terms of hard-core
pornography. And many ncople seem to feel that freedom just isn’t worth it. We have free-
dom of speech - and we have abuse of that freedom, which prompts some to want to restrict
it. We have the right te privacy - we alsi. have crime and conspiracy and collusion, which
many would attack by wire tapping. On and on it goes: daily we see the pain and risk and
hardship of being free. And always the Ture of rigidity - the security of legalism is there.

Thus far we nave thought about freedom in a broad general sense. The purpose has been
to build a base for what we must now do, which is to look at specifically Christian freedom.
Ana to do that we must begin at the beginning - with the Gospel itself.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the Good News of God's love for us. Before any demands
are made of us we are given something - God's Tove. In Jesus Christ, we believe that God
cares about us personally: he accepts us just as we are:he doesn't ask us to become loveable -
to obey the rules - to be good: he loves us as only a father can Tove his own children.
Unfortunately, we're always trying to turn that around: to tie strings to God's love: to
devise methods by which we can persuade him to Tove us. Unfortunately we have been taught
to feel bad and guilty about ourselves: we have learned that the Gospel is not really Good
News at all.

But it is Good! God loves us in spite of what we are. And to know that: to become
aware suddenly that I am loved by my creator is te be brought Tow. It is tc be profoundly
grateful. It is to love him in return. It is te bo made beautifully free in the sense
that I now know I don't have to earn his Tove - I already havea it. It is to want - to need -

to be compelled - to answer that love. After all, that's what happens between people. When

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one person extends love to another it is not often unanswered. In terms of our own parent-
hood we know that our behavioral expectations for our children had better be undergirded
by accepting love - or else they will be ignored, or resentfully obeyed, which may be worse.

To know that God loves me is to be free. It is also to love him in return: to love
him with heart, mind and soul. It is to see that God loves my neighbor, my friend, my
enemy as much as he Toves me. It is to see that the only way we have of answering Gad’s
love - is to love others - to act lovingly in every situation. That's the basis of Chris-
tian ethics. Free from the necessity cf earning God's Tove: but compalled to love others.
Thus Paul could say, “You, my friends, were called ta be free men... but be servants to
one another in love."

A German theologian puts it this way: "At crucial points in the Bible Jesus refuses
to give us very definite and detailed rules of behavior. It would be far too simple to
follow them... Instead of rules, Jesus unlocks the much more strenucus worid of freedom
to us and lets us decide for ourselves which way of obedience we think is demanded of us."

(Helmut Thielicke, How To Believe Again, P. 46)

There is no Taw that can command us to Tove. There is no code of ethics that can
define in every situation what is loving. There ts only freedom and our own sense of God’s
love for us. That's what Augustine meant when he said, "Love, and then do what you please.”

Let's took quickly at some exampics:

~ The law - or the traditional moral standard of a culture may say that divorce is
wrong. The situationist may say that it is not a matter of right and wrong, but
only of expedience. The Christian must make the painful decision of what is loving
for everybody invalved.

- The law may say that marital infidelity is wrong. The person who interprets freedom
as a total absence of restrictions says "Why Not?" The Christian is compelled to
ask, "What'is loving to everyone involved?"

- The cultural norm may demand that a man give his life to his vocation, even if it's
costing nim his health. The Christian is compelled ta decide what is loving and
responsible. For some that may mean giving one's life, literally. Forothers, it

may mean quitting and starting ali over.

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- The cultural imperative may demand that a successful man be involved in his
commanity. ‘nd because he is attending meetings every night his wife and family
may be nurting. The Christian has te decide: The Christian is free to say no -
even to his church,

Does if sound rough ~ ambiguous - shaky ~ dangerous? It is - and the name for it is
Christian. freedom - responsible love lived out of gratitude for God's saving Tove.

Helmut Thielicke, whe I gumted carlicr, is very helpful when he suggests that the
Christian Ethic is not a road map, but a compass, The compass points to the one command-~
ment that is always valid: love God and the neighbor. "'But I myself must find the way.
That is my freedom. The way has rivers, mountains and other rough terrain which I must get
around. At avery crossroad I am faced with the question of which way will enable me to hold
to the indicated direction... The compass leaves me free to pause..and even to be inventive
and independent in the attempt to conquer the rough terrain in my life and to get around
it...The whole countryside is mine; that is my freedom: but I am Christ's, and his love
controls and leads me." (P, 150-151)

Part of it, I am coming to see, is that I cannot do this alone. Given my freedom by
God I am inclined to abuse it - or turn it in for a kind of worn-out tegalism. Part of it
T am coming to see - and here I am confessing rather than preaching ~ is to allow the
gracicus God who has given me my freedom - to Tead ma.

I would conclude with that - with my conviction that God who makes us free - walks
with us - and guides us - that he is literally with us in the moral complexity of our day:
that he catis us to the exciting venture of life lived as free men and that he will not
abanden us when we stumble and fall.

That was said very well in a great old hymn written in 1745

"Guide me, 9 Thou great Jehovah,
Pilgrim through this barren land.
IT am weak, but thou art mighty:
Hold me with thy powerful hand."
You and J are. free - we have been given a limitless gift of personal responsibility.

It is a gift that demands our heart ~ our soul - all our might. AMEH

-J~
Guide us, father, as we make cur way. Give us courage to embrace our freedom: give us

Tove beg enough to answer yours through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN