Free to Know the Lord

There is a new biopic about Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple.  It’s not the first, and may not be the last.  He was a fascinating person; a bit of an enigma.  Jobs was not especially kind or likeable, from all the reports I have heard.  He was not a gifted programmer, like his partner Wozniak.  He was not a businessman.  What was he? What was his particular genius?  He was a creator.

In one part of the movie, he obsesses about the dimensions of his new computer, the Next.  It was a black cube, but apparently the dimensions had to be off just a fraction of an inch for the human eye to perceive it as a cube.  The production staff got it wrong, and Steve was not satisfied with the results.  He actually had a million other problems more urgent than this, but this was the one he obsessed about.

It had something to do with his vision about what people want.  He knew that if he created things that were good for something – that is, useful – and a delight to the eyes – that is, beautiful – people would desire them.  Covet them.  Lust after them.  He was right, wasn’t he?

The trick was just to get the price at a manageable level.  If Apple computers were a lot more expensive than other computers, it was just too great a hurdle for most people, as badly as they might want it.  But when they found the sweet spot, that price which was a little higher than the others, but justifiable to the consumer, the sales would come rolling in. 

We are irrational beings, but we are rational too.  We want what we want, and then we want to justify our wants.

That’s the story of Adam and Eve and the fruit. 

Here they are in this beautiful, perfect garden.  They have everything they need to be content.  They have all the food they need, they have every variety of plant and animal, and they have each other.  I assume they also have the perfect climate, because they have no need of clothes.  They are free to eat, sleep, play, work – whatever they want whenever they want.  And they have a close, intimate relationship with God, their creator.  What more could they want?

Well, it turns out there is something more, and it’s right in the middle of the garden.

They didn’t seem to pay it much attention in the beginning.  They had what they needed; they were content.  The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was there, but it was not to be touched.  End of story. 

But then here comes the serpent with that nasty thought.  Here is something nice that you don’t have.  You want it, don’t you?   It’s tasty, it’s beautiful, and it will make you smart.  Trust me.  This fruit from “the tree of knowledge of good and evil” is pretty great stuff.  Why shouldn’t you have it? 

It took a minimal amount of arm-twisting for Eve and Adam to find justification for taking something that had been forbidden.  Unfortunately for us all, it was kind of a deal-breaker. 

We turn to the story of Adam and Eve in the garden again and again to try to understand what went wrong and why.  Granted, it’s not a factual account of creation.  It’s not history.  It’s a story – one that has much to teach, but today I want to look at what it says to us about freedom. 

The story of Adam and Eve is a story of two people created for freedom – within the bounds of the garden.  The garden, where God has dominion and provides for all their needs.  In this context, Adam and Eve are free of want, free of fear, free of pain.  They are free to love and free to enjoy. 

But the moment they shift their focus from what they have to what they do not have, their freedom doesn’t seem like enough.  Suddenly, they are bored with every other fruit in the garden.  Suddenly, life is unfair because there is something they need, something they have to have, something everyone else has so why can’t they have it too.  Well, maybe not that last part, since there didn’t seem to be anybody else around back then.  But I think we all know what this feels like – to covet something.

It’s very hard for us to distinguish our wants from our needs; this is something we learn at a very young age.  Last summer during vacation Bible school I had a little boy explain to me the difference between a want and a need; all the while I was imagining his mother teaching him that very lesson in the supermarket check out line, the valley of temptation for all boys and girls.

Because we can’t make this distinction very well, we spend a lot of time fretting about what we have and what we don’t have, being anxious about having enough.  And when we are anxious about what we have or don’t have, we have lost our sense of gratitude.

When we have lost our sense of gratitude, when we have succumbed to the belief in scarcity, that we don’t have enough, it is because of one thing: we have forgotten who is the Lord of our lives. 

To whom does this all belong?  To God.  To quote Madeleine L’Engle, “Time is God’s.  We are God’s.  Creation is God’s.” Everything we have is a gift from God.  From that perspective, why ever not be grateful?

I’m not a doctor, but I can tell you this: Gratitude is an antidote to anxiety.  Last fall we practiced a month of gratitude, and we kept daily gratitude journals, where we practiced writing down three things every day for which we were grateful.  Before we started, I heard from some that they were doubtful they could come up with even one thing every day, let alone three things.  Soon they discovered how easy it was.  For many of us, this one little thing improved our lives: the daily practice of gratitude.

Perhaps Adam and Eve simply forgot that the garden of creation was God’s.  That they were part of God’s creation, and as such, cared for and loved by their creator.  What they definitely were not, were the masters of the garden.  If they only could have remembered this important truth, they would have danced through the garden day after day, enjoying the colors, the scents, the tastes and the music surrounding them.  This would have been their worship.

A wise man, Abraham Joshua Heschel, said that you are sure to lose your ability to truly worship when you start to take things for granted.  He said,  “Indifference to the sublime wonder of being is the root of sin.”   

The sin that enslaves us – this is what Jesus told us.  But Jesus also told us that he came to set us free again.  God made this good creation – and that includes us.  God made us free for love and joy; for the peace that passes understanding, for contentment.

We will always do battle with sin.  We will always be susceptible to the fear of scarcity, over the trust in God’s providence.  We will always, again and again, find it hard to remember that we are not the Lord.  These fears and false beliefs will hold us captive.  But the truth will make us free, once again, free.

We are free to know the Lord.  And knowing the Lord makes us free.  Next week we will look at how this makes us free to be rich – in the ways that truly matter.  But throughout this week, let this question guide your prayer:  What are the impediments, the fears, in your life that keep you from living free? 

Give these to Jesus, the one who makes us free … again.