They Told Me It Was Not Real Freedom

The thing that has kept Tanya awake is that the woman was kind.

That is what she cannot get over. If it had been said with a sneer she could have put it down. It was said in a corridor, with a hand on her arm, by a woman who has prayed for her by name for two years and who cried in the third row when Tanya's daughter was dedicated.

She said: I just want to see you completely free, baby. Really free. Not leaning on something.

And then she squeezed her arm and went to get her coat, and it was over in eleven seconds, and Tanya has been carrying it for four months.

Here is what she is leaning on.

She has been in medication assisted treatment for nineteen months. She takes it every day. It is prescribed and monitored and it is the reason she is alive, and she does not say that dramatically: she is alive, and there are people she used to know who are not, and the difference between her and them is not that she wanted it more.

In nineteen months she has got her daughter back three days a week. She has a job with a manager who knows everything. She has not used in fourteen months. She got baptized in August.

And she stands in that building on a Sunday knowing that some people in it, kind people, people who love her, quietly believe her freedom has an asterisk on it.

Am I free, or am I only free until I come off it?

And here is where I stop talking about Tanya, because somebody has said something like that to you. Kindly. With a hand on your arm.

So let me say the first thing very plainly, and I am going to say it as clearly as I know how: taking your medicine is not a lack of faith. It is not a lesser freedom. It is not a compromise God is putting up with while He waits for the real version. Whoever told you otherwise was wrong, and being kind while they said it does not make it less wrong.

You stand to your own Master

Let me put the strongest thing down first, because you have been standing in that building for four months feeling like a partial case.

You are not on trial in that corridor and that woman is not the court. There is a specific verse for exactly this situation, and it is aimed at the person doing the assessing rather than at you: And it is the Holy Spirit who makes that land in you rather than merely read well.

Who are you that judges another man's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Yes, he shall be held up: for God is able to make him stand.Romans 14:4

Read it in order, because it does three things and every one of them is for you.

First it asks the questioner who they think they are. Not rudely. It simply points out that they are not the employer.

Then it establishes where you actually stand: to his own master. Your standing is a matter between you and God, and it is not adjudicated in a corridor by somebody getting their coat.

And then it does the thing that finishes the argument. Yes, he shall be held up: for God is able to make him stand. The verse does not leave you defending yourself. It hands the outcome to the ability of God, which is not a thing anybody in that building gets a vote on.

So your freedom does not have an asterisk on it, and Scripture is where I stand that rather than my own indignation, and God's Spirit is not waiting on a taper before He calls you His.

The word freedom, used correctly

Now let me deal with the theology under it, because the woman in the corridor was working from a real idea and it deserves a real answer rather than annoyance.

The idea is that freedom means needing nothing. That the fully free person stands entirely unassisted.

That is not the Bible's picture of freedom anywhere. Scripture's free people are dependent people: dependent on God constantly, on bread daily, on each other visibly. Paul, who wrote most of the letters about freedom, describes himself as being carried, comforted by the arrival of a friend, sustained by a gift, and he never once treats needing something as a defect in his liberty.

And there is the plain matter of what your medicine is doing. It is not the thing that had you. It is what is holding the door open. Fourteen months, a job, a daughter three days a week, and a baptism in August are not the fruit of a compromise. They are the fruit of a rescue that came with a face and a phone number.

Hear this: you are free, actually and presently, and the freedom is not provisional and it is not on probation. That is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it something you can walk into that building on Sunday carrying rather than something you argue in your head at night.

And now the practical half, and I will be exact, because getting this wrong can kill people. Do not stop or reduce your treatment to prove anything to anybody, and do not let a well meant sentence in a corridor put a taper in your head. Any change to this is made with your prescriber, with a plan, on medical grounds, and never as evidence of faith. If somebody in your church is pushing you to come off, tell your prescriber that is happening; it is the kind of pressure they are trained to help you with. And if you are ever in danger, if you have used more than you meant to, or the thought has turned toward not being here, get medical help now and tell one person today. In the United States you can call or text 988 at any hour. There are people awake right now.