Below is a short piece on how we can use failure to grow closer to God. As you can see, I’m trying out some new covers. Any suggestions for how to improve are appreciated. Let me know how you have used failures to grow!
I had some interesting conversations recently that have brought to light some of my own thoughts and encouraged me to go deeper both as a Christian and as an artist. It started by remembering my notes on teaching Edgar Allen Poe and Mary Shelley and thinking back on some of my experiences as an early writer with all the different advice that is given to new and struggling writers on how to craft a story. Things like “To write something real you need to write from the pains inside you” or “Story is about struggle” or “The deepest stories are the ones that touch a universal truth that everyone can relate to” which would then be followed by lists like loss, broken relationships, loneliness, unfulfilled desires, etc. And I accepted these sayings. I tried to imitate them, to locate the pains in me that others could relate to and then to try to represent them as honestly as I could in the way that would best aid the story.
I realized though that much of the advice I had been given was on how to recreate pain, perhaps there would be a positive end to the story ultimately, but the whole point was to create something real that would touch others deep down inside, something they could recognize as raw and true, and preferably something that would make them cry from the trueness of it.
In the writing world, outside of Romance, a story with a happy ending is mocked as something only the uneducated commercial masses and ‘soft’ people want. Real life is always given as the prime example. Cinderella would find she doesn’t really fit in at the castle and she’s not prepared for a castle life that will lead to her having a lonely existence. Sleeping Beauty would get a divorce. The Little Mermaid would turn into seafoam and the man she loved would marry another. Happily ever afters (HEAs) don’t really exist. The stories just stop before real life begins. Writers who want to change or shape culture have to write something true and while everyone may secretly want a happy ending, that’s not the way reality works.
That is what they would say.
But I’d also done some research into the Grimm Brothers and how they wrote many of their stories to reflect biblical truths. So, the prince on a white horse riding to rescue his bride, was a reminder that Christ would come for the Church. He would swing her onto His horse and carry her to a castle made just for her where they would live in peace and joy forever.
I could see how such an ending would seem false to those who have no such hope. But the more I have thought about what a story is, what a Christian is as someone who has access to the Creator of all that is good and beautiful, the more I have begun to question the power of pain, darkness, and evil in the creation of story.
Some of this goes back to my processing of villains and heroes, you can read that here, because villainy is preferable to heroism. And in other words, evil is seen as stronger than good. Yet, as a Christian I believe that God is good. His goodness is greater than evil every time. If God is the center of my world, then healing, faithfulness, belonging, and building are all truly better than brokenness, distrust, isolation, and destruction. It is all about worldview.
One of the things about fiction that is so enjoyable is that it is fake, things in fiction don’t normally happen in real life and so we can experience all sorts of things we would never be able to naturally. But the problem with this is that in a fake world, evil can be stronger than good. Good, for the purposes of tension, only barely squeaks out a victory through a writer miracle. We, as writers, assume that having the capability to do all the evil one desires would lead the most power, but a person like that would always be bound by their suspicions and their own desires that they cannot escape. Such a person ought to be pitied because they can never find peace and they are utterly alone. Just as we assume that a person bound to do what is lawful, right, and good will always be crushed by a person who is ‘free’ from those concerns. Yet those who do what is good are the freest people there are. They never have to look over their shoulder. They can sleep peacefully at night without regret. They do good to others and others want to help them in return.
All of this leads me to a point where I want to see what a story would look like that highlights goodness in all its glorious freedom and evil in all its limiting slavery. Can a story about building up something be better than a story about tearing it down? What if the next big literature fad is utopians not dystopians? Or at least utopian in the sense that the society has a good foundation that needs to be repaired, fought for, or upheld. Can a story about moral goodness still bring tension, action, and adventure? Would the deepest longings inside of us see wholeness and belonging and rest as greater truths?
If God is real, and He is, then the greatest modes of storytelling are yet to be exhausted. Consider this, what kinds of stories are being written in Heaven right now? Have J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald just put away their pens? Or have they gained new perspective as to what makes the climax of a story beautiful? Who will want to read about the triumph, or even momentary triumph, of evil in Heaven when God’s light and goodness are so tangibly present?
I’m still thinking through these things, but I intend to explore what can be created with God in the center of my world.
On January 27, 2021, Samuel Perry tweeted to American Christians who ‘have a “biblical worldview”‘ that the assumption of having a biblical worldview was false because we all only have interpretations based on a subculture of ‘whiteness, individualism, patriarchy, and capitalism.’ Perry assumes that these are ‘bad influences’ to be purged from a worldview before the worldview can be biblical.
But what is a biblical worldview?
Let’s break this down even more. What is a worldview?
A worldview is simply the way all the things that happen in the world are understood and it includes the explanations for why we think they happened with that result rather than another result. We all experience life through a lens that we use to explain why what we are doing is the best way to do that action. Why do some people think hard work leads to success? Why do some people think an education is necessary? Why do some people feel like nothing they do will enable them to achieve a desired result? All of the answers to these lead to the way those people view reality and how they explain the way the world works.
A worldview covers all areas of life. Most of our routines come from our worldview. Why we brush our teeth or whether we make our bed can all be boiled down, not just to our values, but to our reasons for why we have those values rather other values. But most people have very little knowledge of their own worldview and often most people have snippets of many worldviews, even worldviews that contradict and clash with each other.
For instance, people who believe that ‘God helps those who help themselves’ are going to see value in taking action, in arranging things for their own benefit, and in attributing all their gains as a blessing from God for their action in the first place. This phrase though does not come from a biblical worldview. It comes from a man-centric worldview. Everything people who believe this and act on it will do is based solely on themselves and what they can help themselves to. God is a side character who only exists to bless man’s effort to bless himself.
Now, there is a small angle of truth in this saying, in that inaction is less blessed by God than action because action can receive those blessings whereas inaction cannot. If I pray for God to help me forgive but then refuse to change my own thought patterns or to pray for the person I’m unforgiving toward, God cannot bless my ‘desire’ to forgive because I am not willing to attempt the things that might bring me to a place where I can forgive. Or in another way, if I don’t have a job and I ask God for a job, but then do not apply anywhere and never tell anyone I need a job, then God will not have natural opportunities to help me get a job because I am not willing to put in the work to get one. But in this small angle of truth, the emphasis is on what God is willing to bless and not on what I can get for myself. By changing the focus from man to God, this angle of the saying becomes more biblically minded.
In taking the above example and continuing with the definition of what a worldview is, people who believe that God is more willing to bless action over inaction will then see a certain personal responsibility to act in such a way that God can bless what is done. They will take action in the areas where they can and trust that God will take care of the rest. Then, when they get a new job, or are given new opportunities or responsibilities, they will see those as God’s blessings in their lives, not because of their action, but because they are living in a reality where God blesses those kinds of things and because God loves to bless. That is how their worldview affects their lives.
A worldview determines what kind of reality we think exists. When we act and have an unexpected negative result, our worldview helps us to figure out what went wrong and why. People who think they are lucky are more likely to be positive and to see their daily successes as reaffirming their luckiness. People who think they are unlucky are more likely to be negative and to focus on all the difficulties and troubles they have as reaffirming of their lack of luck. Both people believe luck exists and explains why good or bad things happen. Both people could have the same kind of day and see the opposite outcomes because of their perspective on how they think reality is.
Now, what is a biblical worldview?
A biblical worldview is a worldview that places God at the center of all reality and then seeks to orient everything we experience back to a proper view of God. Thus, if we find a hidden $20 in our wallet when we need to buy milk, it is not because we are lucky, but because God has helped us to find it and is providing for us. In other words, God is the center of our reality, our provider, and our rescuer.
There is also something to be said about having a right view of God in order to have a biblical worldview because some have said that God is the cause of everything and therefore God is also the cause of genocide and rape and all the evil in this world. That is not a biblical understanding of the God revealed in the Bible who is good, loves what is good, who does not rejoice in the death of anyone, who loves justice (that is the punishing of evil) and righteousness, who thwarts the plans of the wicked, and who calls us to turn from our evil ways to be holy and perfect as He is. In this way, the Bible itself is vital to understand who God is and who God is not. Using the Bible as a standard, prevents anyone from creating an idea of God not found in the Bible and promoting it as the standard because we can always go back to what the Bible say about God to show where that idea does not match the reality of who God really is.
Which brings us to Samuel Perry’s actual argument that the ‘biblical worldview’ some Christians think they have has been badly influenced by the subcultures of ‘whiteness, individualism, patriarchy, and capitalism,’ influences that could be removed or should be removed. Yes, it is certainly true that not every Christian who claims to have a biblical worldview actually has one. But what is the standard, the target that defines Perry’s worldview and determines right from wrong? Is a biblical worldview one devoid of ‘whiteness, individualism, patriarchy, and capitalism?’ No, not directly, Perry’s argument is not for Christians to return to a focus on God, but to focus on other ideology. His idea of right ideology. A biblical worldview is concerned first about God, the God who created all things, and Christ the ruler of all things.
While it is true that we catch our worldviews as children from the culture we grow up in, and that our worldview is fairly fixed by our early teens even though we do not know we have done this, it does not automatically mean that if we have placed God at the center of our reality that our worldview will be corrupted by bad influences. A worldview centered around God will value God above all else. A worldview centered around God will value the lives of others no matter what their race, sex, country of origin, economic position, religion, or anything else simply because such a person knows God has created all mankind in His image and that God wants all to be saved. A worldview centered around God will cause a person to seek justice for all people no matter who they are because God is just. A worldview centered around God is not held accountable to reach the quality of definitions used by culture simply because it is accountable only to God.
While it is always good to be open to God’s correction of our lives and our motivations, and that correction can come in many different forms, even in the form of a tweet, the actual definition of a biblical worldview is not a transient mist that can be blown in any direction academics might like. But Perry’s understanding of a biblical worldview is actually based on the assumption that no one can have a biblical worldview without checking out the right views by those who are not hampered by ‘whiteness, individualism, patriarchy, and capitalism.’ In other words, Perry’s own worldview suggests that a source other than God is the right answer to a biblical worldview. If such a worldview was discovered, it would not be a worldview centered around God, but man.
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Once upon a time, there was a great king who singlehandedly fought off and defeated the enemies of his people. He returned victorious, had his close friends write of his accomplishments, and sat down in the great hall to receive his subjects for any reason they might wish to see him. At first, the whole kingdom rejoiced and crowded into the great hall lingering often and returning each day. Those who knew the king went off to tell of his great deeds elsewhere and more and more people entered the kingdom, those who were left began to teach the new citizens from the king’s accomplishments and often brought the new citizens into the great hall for the king to teach. Yet, some of those who had been in the kingdom began to make claims that they understood his accomplishments better than others. Still, people came to the great hall and spoke with the king, but there was not as many as before. Although there were always a few citizens who would spend days and days speaking and listening to the great king when all the others had gone away.
Then among the people there arose issues where some people pretending to be citizens made evil, twisted claims about the great king. Real citizens argued with the false citizens, but not all citizens were swayed to the truth and soon new ideas were created based on the king’s accomplishments. The citizens went to the great hall and some spoke to the great king and sought to listen to him, but others just vented their frustrations and made it hard for the first to hear what the great king said. Although there were always a few citizens who would spend days and days speaking and listening to the great king when all the others had gone away.
Around that time, another kingdom arose and saw the power of the first kingdom and at first tried to kill all of the citizens, but more citizens came to the first kingdom from the other kingdom when the deeds of the great king’s citizens were seen by all. So, the other kingdom decided it would join with the first without the permission of the great king and it gave positions of power in their kingdom to the citizens of the first kingdom. Some citizens rejected the power, but others accepted it and claimed the power of the great king had been given to them to determine what is true and right about the king’s accomplishments. They created new laws and tweaked the king’s accomplishments to support their positions. These citizens created their own hall and soon many of the citizens would go to that hall instead of the hall of the great king. Some citizens would go to both halls, but they did not reject the second hall. Although there were always a few citizens who would spend days and days speaking and listening to the great king when all the others had gone away.
A small group of citizens saw what was done and grew angry at how the accomplishments of the great king were being twisted to serve a different power than the actual power the great king had. Their chief complaint was that the signs leading to the great king’s hall had been replaced by signs in a language most of the people did not know. These citizens opposed the usurper citizens and the hall they had set up and rewrote the signs leading to the great king’s hall so that the people could again go see the king. The usurper citizens then went to war against those citizens, but the great king aided them and gave them great positions in his house. The people were all divided with some agreeing and others disagreeing that what the usurpers did was right. Although there were always a few citizens who would spend days and days speaking and listening to the great king when all the others had gone away.
Some of those citizens were so zealous for the great king that they admired his accomplishments most of all and they held to a belief that the only authority in the kingdom for the daily lives of the citizens was the king’s accomplishments. This belief spread throughout the kingdom when the people saw that using the king’s accomplishments could be used to defend a way of life, a belief on how citizens should live, or an idea of what it meant to be a citizen. Soon more and more citizens disagreed with each other over what the king’s accomplishments said and what they meant and what they meant originally when the king’s friends had written them down. More and more halls were built so that the people could come and learn about the right way of understanding the king’s accomplishments and small battles between the halls would arise. Still, those who went to the halls would seek out the king’s great hall and present their concerns to him, yet few stayed to listen because they were certain their understanding of the king’s accomplishments was rightly, logically, and historically valid. Their arguments meant more to them than the king’s explanation of what really happened and what was really intended. Although there were always a few citizens who would spend days and days speaking and listening to the great king when all the others had gone away.
Then there arose another kingdom who claimed to be the true representative of what the great king’s accomplishments were. They told all the other citizens to stop speaking about the original accomplishments, but to accept their version, which was the more compassionate version. The citizens were conflicted because the other kingdom looked big and many of the citizens around them began to believe that what that kingdom said had to be true and were journeying over to that kingdom to live. Some even took their halls into the other kingdom’s land, but claimed the hall was still in the land of the great king.
The citizens of the other kingdom would chide those who dared to think differently, but especially those who held to the old version of the king’s accomplishments because they refused to believe that the great king would ever mean anything but what the other kingdom said. They had many passages in the king’s accomplishments that they used to prove their point. Some of the citizens who were left returned to their halls and produced great arguments against the other kingdom’s claims and many of the people rejoiced. But there were always a few citizens who would spend days and days speaking and listening to the great king when all the others had gone away.
During that time some citizens remembered the great king’s hall and they returned to the hall to speak and to listen. They no longer wanted to be divided and they no longer wanted to rule the king’s kingdom in his stead. They placed the king’s own person first before his accomplishments and sought to know him and to understand his rule over them now. They refused to live in another kingdom and they refused to go to other halls because the great king listened to them, spoke to them about life and how his kingdom was to be run, and he showed them what was right and true in his accomplishments. And there were many citizens who would spend days and days speaking and listening to the great king and the hall was filled once more.
In my last post, here, I discussed when individualism is wrong and is not biblical. But not all aspects of individualism are evil. There are some important and biblical aspects of an individual mindset that should be considered. These are three times when individualism is good:
When it promotes individual responsibility
This is important. There are some people who would suggest that sins can be obtained simply by belonging to a definable group, like white or conservative or rich. These people ignore and downplay the fact that God has called all of us to be responsible for our own actions. All of our deeds are written under our names and not under the names of others. It is the careless words that we have spoken that will be brought up on our judgement day, not the careless words others have said. We are responsible for our hands, our feet, our tongues, our actions, and our decisions. And to whatever extent we deceive or influence others, we then hold some responsibility for them as well when they are acting from our teachings. It is a scary thought, but it should be a scary thought. To wash away personal responsibility in exchange for group responsibility is to ignore what is taught in the Bible. We matter individually and our actions matter.
When individuals use it to act for good alone
Individualism is the only way that the few manage to resist the flow of society to bring about change. If everyone is part of the community and the community is going toward destruction, we have to stop moving with the community and stand against the current. It is hard to resist everyone we know and what everyone around us wants, but it is for the sake of the community that sometimes individuals have to rise out and correct the wrongs that the community is committing. Which leads to the next point.
When everyone is thinking for themselves
Groupthink is actually not good for a free society. When everyone thinks the same things about the same things, we haven’t thought through the reasons for why we should think those things. This is quite true in many circles today. Most people are content to repeat talking points from their side without thinking through them or listening to other perspectives. This is a dangerous mindset. But when people start to think for themselves it makes society stronger. We all have different experiences and perceptions that can help others think through events and issues in new ways. Plus, when we all think for ourselves, we are less likely to be fooled, lied to, or manipulated into doing evil because there will be many voices bringing light to darkness.
These are the ways where individualism is good for society and biblical. While there are some ideas that are pure evil, individualism is not one of them. There are some ways that individualism is wrong, and other ways it is good. We need to discern between them.
What about you? When do you see individualism as wrong? When have you seen it as good? Write me a comment and let me know!!
In this episode, I discuss some of my experiences with writing down prayer requests and how keeping track of all the things God has done has blessed me. Check it out!
Recently there has been an attack against individualism both outside and particularly inside the Church. What is often brought up at least in Christian arguments is that the Church is a community not an individuality. We are intended to gather and share Christ together. ‘No man is an island unto himself,’ etc. To an extent, absolutely the Church is a community and yes, the Church also gathered in homes in the early Church. Whole families would come to Christ and live for Christ together. There was no concept of an individual sinner’s prayer.
Yet, when Christians today throw out the term individualism, they don’t just mean a lack of community in the Church. What they are really attacking is the modern use of individualism in America today that has grown, in part out of Christian ideals and out of Western ideology to become what it is now. While some may want to destroy individualism completely in order to return to an early Church community mindset, that is not practical in our current culture where the idea of communal living is foreign in an increasingly isolationist world. We are not moving toward community, but away. This is not to say that we should not try to increase community, we should, but we may have to go much slower than those currently ready for community would like.
Still, there are three ways in which I would agree that individualism is wrong.
When the individual has no one to keep him accountable, even God
Individualism is absolutely wrong when the individual has become so used to being alone that there is no one who will stand up to him that he will listen to. This happens often when a person has been in higher positions and is no longer accountable or has rejected the accountability given to him by others. Such a person holds his thoughts, decisions, and reasonings as the highest standard. He will listen to no one, not even God. He is utterly individualistic.
When individualism leads to self-centered living
Individualism is wrong because it can lead to preferring self over others to the point of not seeing the needs of those around them. When a person is so individually focused that she can’t see the needs of a person next to her, that is when she has entered into the dangerous area of individualism. Living for the self and primarily for the self is very much an idea of individualism that the Christian should not entertain. We are all called to live for God, to love others, not to live for ourselves.
When individualism promotes relative truth
Individualism is also wrong when it suggests that truth is subjective to the individual, that truth itself is relative submitted to the whims of whatever each person wants. This push for subjective truth is entirely individualistic since only that specific person can claim what is true for them. It is no longer about what is real, scientific, factual, or God-centered, but it is about what a person feels is true. There are no objective truths that might be true for me but false for you, there are only subjective opinions that can be true for me but false for you.
All of these areas are part of the real danger of individualism. But this is not the whole story. There are some aspects of individualism that are in fact good and biblical. Check out my next post for that!
In my last post, I wrote about the different types of freedom there are and what living in freedom looks like. But why is it that it is so hard to live in freedom? Why do most people tend to have at least something holding them back? If freedom is so right, why is it so hard to do or to find?
The biggest reason has to do with cause and effect. We can easily discern between safe and dangerous things as children. All it takes is one touch of the hot stove, one tumble off the couch, one fall off a bike, to intuitively teach us what not to do. Some of us may need more lessons than others, but the repeated result reinforces in us when to expect negative consequences. Even when we might be fine doing those things ourselves, as I know I have intentionally touched hot things and fallen off of couches, we know that those actions can cause pain and that there are right and wrong ways to do those activities in the sense that some ways produce more pain than others. If one poorly jumps one’s bike into a lake it is less painful than poorly jumping one’s bike on hot concrete at high speeds.
However, the spiritual, relational, and emotional areas of reality can have a disconnect between cause and effect because the effect comes, or is recognized, only days, months, or years after the cause so that it becomes harder to know that our past actions had the wrong consequences. We easily recognize the connection between stepping on a tack, feeling pain, and the idea that stepping on tacks is bad. But it is harder to recognize that talking badly about others will have negative effects if the people we talk about don’t ever know what we said. Or the effects of specific youth programs will have on teens over the long term. Or what the practice of fasting or praying does over the years.
But why are things like that so hard to learn? Why couldn’t God just make all parts of the world with and immediate cause and effect?
Imagine a world where everything we did had an immediate effect. We speak badly about someone and the person hears and everyone is mad and censors us. We try a youth program and that week 75% of the teens are doing drugs and hate God, but we switch the program and the next week 85% of the teens have given up drugs, love to worship God, want to have more Bible studies, and are all making plans to serve God. We fast and pray one day and get instant clarity into our situation and feel God with us. We fast and pray a whole year and are so mature our white hairs have white hairs.
What happens in such a world? It limits our ability to make choices momentarily free of consequences so that we can consider what the ultimate outcome will be and whether that outcome is one we want to experience. There actually isn’t any opportunity to ponder, learn, and grow. If God made everything like that we would never mature. We would have to be spoon-fed all our wrong moral decisions with immediate moral pains and we might learn not to do those things, but we would not learn the wisdom of why they are bad or how to see through the momentary lie of immediate gratification.
It is truly interesting that God has given us both immediate consequences and delayed consequences. Imagine if we stepped on a tack and didn’t feel it for days, months or years. Our physical bodies would be in ruins and we might not know why. But many decisions that distress our bodies need an effect to come quick in order for us to know how to care for our bodies otherwise they will die. Our souls are not like our bodies. They are more permanent. They will last thousands and thousands of years. In order for us to be good stewards of our souls over the long haul, we have to be able to think and process possible consequences to our actions in the future, otherwise we will always need someone else to bail us out. That is the way we become mature, responsible beings who can enjoy freedom forever.
Here’s some tips to how you can used traffic to work on godliness and spend time with God.
What is freedom? There are different levels to freedom, but in our day, it is important to understand what freedom is and what it is not. There are freedoms of skill, freedoms of action, and freedoms of soul.
Freedoms of skill are the ability to do something true, good, or beautiful completely unhindered by self and others. This is specifically true of individuals who have become a master in some area. They are free in a way that no others are. If you have ever seen a gifted artist, musician, a gifted plumber, roofer, a gifted speaker, communicator, or a gifted athlete, then you might know what I mean. They can do effortlessly what everyone else would struggle for years trying to do, simply because they have already struggled for years and have succeeded to move beyond that stage. They intuitively know what to do next, they solve problems without skipping a beat, they are free in their craft to do whatever their craft is capable of doing. It is amazing and fun just to watch a master at work.
Freedoms of action can be both beautiful and dreadful, but they are no less important up to a point. God has given all men the ability to make choices. What to do today, how to respond, what to think about, all these and more are the areas of freedom that we all experience. Yet each choice also has a consequence which can be positive or negative that is often compounded by the more we make that choice in the same way. It is very, very important for man to have the choice to make a good choice or a bad choice, granted some bad choices lead to horrific actions and those bad choices should be stopped by others. But in general, we are all making choices each day and our choices determine the kind of person we are going to be for all eternity. The more we choose to be selfish, angry, and fearful, the harder it will be to become a person who is self-controlled, peaceful, and trusting. And the more we are self-controlled, peaceful, and trusting, the easier it will be to do that and more until we have reached the same level of freedom as the master has in a freedom of skill. However, without our ability to choose, we would have no capability to grow and mature. It is in this way that freedoms of action are beautiful and necessary. If, though, we use our freedom of action to make negative choices, that is when they can be horrible, not only do they become self-limiting and self-harming, but those choices will hurt others too, often deeply. However, even with negative choices we can come to a point where we realize that our choices are wrong and determine to make better choices. We would not be where we are now without the ability to make the bad choices we have made already and learned from them what is wrong so that we can choose to do what is right. It is only by the freedom to make wrong choices that we have come to know why right choices are better and to be preferred.
This leads to freedoms of soul. Everyone has a soul and our soul carries the rightness and wrongness of all we have done. When we do actions we know are right, our souls are light and happy. When we do actions we know are wrong, our souls become burdened, heavy, and weary. Sometimes this slavery of the soul happens and we know it is happening. The first time we lied, stole, or cheated our soul recoiled and depending on if we made things right determines if our soul recovered or continued to wilt. Sometimes it happens because believe it is the only way and we have ignored our soul so many times that it would seem like our souls no longer existed, but our souls are still there and they can be restored by Christ. Even as Christians we can know this. Often, we live right next to freedom, but we are afraid to go all the way. But the life with Christ is the easiest life for the soul that there is because our souls are completely free from all the poor decisions we have been told we have to live with. We never have to carry a lie, because in Christ we only ever need the truth. We never have to carry fear, because we can trust God to always care for us. We never have to carry unforgiveness, because God is a righteous judge. We never have to live to the unmet expectations of others, because we live for God and He is able to make us to stand. We never have to be alone, because God is always with us. All of these things and more make our souls light and fresh and we never have to exchange our souls for a lie or to evil because God is our strength. Our souls are meant to be free and in Christ they are fully what they are meant to be.
Freedom is what we are meant to live in. It is where we find our greatest joys and pleasures. It is what everyone should have so that their own choices may teach them to choose better. When we think freedom has been taken away or lost, life becomes worse and we shrink to fit the space we think we now have. But in Christ we can see the lies that try to capture our souls and reject them. In Christ we can become mature through practice and habit. In Christ we will always have freedom.
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