outWORD by Matte Downey

Image from goodfridayblues.wordpress.com I have been doing quite a bit of reading and thinking about freedom in the past year or two. Some of it has to do with my doctoral dissertation and some of it has to do with my ongoing spiritual formation and a personal desire to be truly free. When we think of freedom in our Western culture, we often think about the ability to make our own choices, to say I don't want to eat pizza today, I want to eat sushi. Or I want to do what I want to do, not what you want me to do. We often see freedom primarily as self-determination, autonomy, and the ability to say No. However, freedom can also be thought of as consent, having the ability to align ourselves with another, the power to say Yes to someone. I want to say more about this second sense of freedom, but first, a bit of an overview of the scriptural idea of freedom. The Greek words we translate as freedom in the New Testament are: 1. eleutheria:  freedom, liberty, especially from slaver...