“Perfectly free, servant of all.”

Too often the way we speak of freedom is the way the Bible speaks of sin.

The lectionary epistle for this Sunday is Galatians 5:1, 13-25.

HERE is my book on Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, and what follows is an excerpt from it.

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Two stories:

Shane Clifton is a professor of theology at Alphacrucis College in Australia. In October 2010, Clifton suffered an injury while jumping a bicycle, an event he describes matter-of-factly as “a contingent event that is part and parcel for what it means to be a creature of the earth.” Such a matter-of-fact description is, in fact, quite terrifying, for Clifton’s everyday bicycle accident rendered him a complete (C5) quadripalegic. His memoir, Husbands Should Not Break, is a book in which the author resists writing what he calls “inspiration porn.”

Clifton speaks candidly about the depression and despair that attended his seven-month rehabilitation in Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney and the dark night of the soul that soon followed. About the time immediately after his discharge, Clifton writes:

“Eventually I arrived home, and entered a house bedecked with balloons and streamers, to the cheers and tears of my wife and children. We were all excited but, although we didn’t voice our concerns, we were also a little nervous—like newlyweds on a honeymoon, in love, but tentative. Not long after I arrived, Elly looked my way, smiled, and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. Looking on, the boys joined in spontaneously, a five-person hug that expressed our love and constrained our fear. There was one problem. I had forgotten to turn my wheelchair’s power off, and with Jacob accidentally leaning against my joystick, we were propelled like a rugby scrum into the kitchen table, which in turn smashed through our rear window, spraying shards of glass in every direction. It put an end to our cuddle, but did give us something to laugh about.

What we didn’t realize at the time was that this event would turn out to be symbolic.”

To be sure, Husbands Should Not Break tells a harrowing story, yet it also tells a surprising story. It does not tell a story of Shane Clifton negotiating a life of challenge and struggle but nevertheless finding something approximating happiness. It instead tells a story of how Shane and his wife eventually find a deeper and more abiding happiness than the happiness that had constituted their life prior to paralysis.

Under the conditions of his new, changed life, Clifton discovered a happiness he had not previously known, a happiness that is discovered not in spite of his struggles but because of them. To be disabled, Clifton writes, is to be in a near constant state of sheer vulnerability before others and absolute dependency upon God and neighbor. Such dependency usually strikes us as an ordeal to be avoided at all costs, but, through it, Clifton received a life he would not trade for any other life.

“Paralysis liberated me,” he says.

That’s the first story. The second story you might’ve seen in the news.

Irwin Bernstein, a retired Air Force veteran, was recently serving a second, postretirement stint on the faculty at the University of Georgia. When the fall semester began last week, Professor Bernstein made clear to the students enrolled in his psychology class that he would not make any exceptions to his mandatory mask policy.

“No mask, no class,” the professor wrote on the white board on the first day before handing out the syllabus. Bernstein explained to the class that he had come out of retirement to teach them and that, because of his old age and underlying medical condition, he expected his students to respect his rule. He suffers type two diabetes and high blood pressure, and contracting the coronavirus could very easily be lethal to him. If anyone suspected that perhaps the professor of psychology was conducting his own real-time psychological test, those suspicions were dashed by the next class.

On the second day of class, a student, Hannah Huff, defiantly showed up without a mask. When handed a mask by a classmate, the student put it on but refused to wear it over her nose. When Professor Bernstein asked her repeatedly to wear the mask properly, she ignored him, pretending not to hear him.

Finally, Bernstein stopped pleading with her and announced to his seminar students that he was resigning. On the spot. He gathered up his briefcase and books and walked out of the classroom. Later, the professor told the campus newspaper that whereas he had risked his life to defend his country while in the Air Force, he was not willing to risk his life to teach a class with an unmasked student during this pandemic. Professor Bernstein, who’s nearly ninety years old, says he’s received many, many messages due to his decision to retire, with some expressing support for his decision but many others expressing anger and using profane language over the way the professor impinged on the “liberty” of his student.

When asked about her refusal to wear a mask, Hannah replied with pride that she can do what wants. If she doesn’t want to wear a mask, she should not have to wear a mask. It’s a matter freedom, she insisted.

I begin with these two stories about freedom because one of these stories is about what Christians mean by the word “freedom” and the other of these stories is about the opposite of what Christians mean by “freedom.”