Finding true freedom
It can seem that there are all kinds of things that would limit us – illness, age, history, for instance. But recognizing our true nature as God’s children brings healing and freedom from limitations.
As many countries open travel and business once again, some people are feeling liberated, while others are reluctant to emerge too quickly. But all of us can look beyond what is restricted or allowed and seek something more than just returning to bustling cafés and gridlocked traffic. True freedom is much greater.
The discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, goes to the heart of true freedom when she says, “God’s being is infinity, freedom, harmony, and boundless bliss” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 481). God, Spirit, is the real source and essence of freedom – fearless and limitless Life. You and I are inseparable from God, and are inherently free because God, as Life, is so.
I’ve been a runner most of my life. I’ve also loved climbing mountains and flying down ski slopes at high speed. There’s definitely a sense of exhilaration that comes from pushing past physical limits. But we can never feel – or be – more free than when we become fully conscious for even a moment of divine Truth, God, as the whole of our life. This Truth destroys limiting beliefs about ourselves we’ve accepted as fact. These beliefs must change to allow healing to happen and to show us our innate spiritual freedom.
Freedom isn’t something we obtain, but something we reflect and can freely admit today because we are each God’s divine likeness. Accepting life as fundamentally mortal carries with it a persistent sense of being imprisoned, whereas spiritual thinking that begins with God, good, divine Life, always confers freedom. Healing is the result of knowing we are subject only to God, infinite Truth, Life, and Love. Then, limits begin to disappear and are replaced by the beauty and divine goodness of God’s creation as the reality of being, and we experience increased freedom and healing.
Christ Jesus, the greatest example of someone living a life of true freedom, unfettered by the confines of matter, promised those who followed his teachings, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32, New King James Version). More than a freedom from something, Jesus taught the freedom to do or be something by accepting our real nature as a child of God, inseparable from God. Freedom is living and acting from the basis of our innate, spiritual identity, which is God-given and can never be taken from us.
Even when someone didn’t appear to be free, Jesus showed them that freedom was their divine right. One such man, who had been ill for 38 years and felt helpless, sat by the side of a special pool said to bring healing to the first one who touched it after an angel was believed to stir the water (see John 5:2-9). He was waiting for someone to bring him his freedom by putting him into the water. He believed health and liberty were possible but rare, and dependent on unique circumstances, whereas Jesus showed him that freedom was right at hand, universally available.
The more we understand and seek God, the more Truth dawns in consciousness and shows limitations to be false. The more we observe and pay attention to the thoughts that are guiding our actions, the more we can change them. The spiritual truth of what we are supersedes beliefs about what we are not. We are not our beliefs about ourselves – we are the clear-thinking, peaceful, compassionate, innovative, pure expressions of God, and include freedom and boundless bliss.
And so, we discover this as our beliefs change, and we find we can live as the full and completely free expression of Spirit, God.
Adapted from an editorial published in the July 5, 2021, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.
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