•…why then do you baptize…? (John 1:25)
•…to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners… (Isaiah 61:1)
•…the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name. He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation. (Luke 1:49,50)
•I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘make straight the way of the Lord,’ (John 1:23)
•Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. (1 Thessalonians 5:17)

 

•Why do you baptize? How do you baptize?
•Who are the “captives” and the “prisoners”? Who will “proclaim liberty” and “release them”? How are they set free?
•Where is the “desert”? Where will you listen for “the voice crying out”?
•When do you “pray without ceasing”?

And yet in the name of liberty man is enslaved. He frees himself from one kind of servitude and enters into another. This is because freedom is bought by obligations, and obligations are bonds. We do not sufficiently distinguish the nature of bonds we take upon ourselves in order to be free.

If I obligate myself spiritually in order to be free economically, then I buy a lower freedom at the price of a higher one, and in fact I enslave myself. (In ordinary words, this is called selling my soul for the sake of money, and what money can buy.)

Today, as a matter of fact there is very little freedom anywhere because everyone is willing to sacrifice his spiritual liberty for some lower kind. He will compromise his personal integrity (spiritual liberty) for the sake of security, or ambition, or pleasure, or just to be left in peace. <sup>1



1</sup>Merton, Thomas, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Doubleday: New York, 1989, p. 83.