Independence Day Reflections
This is the first time in a few years we have been in the US for the 4th of July and this year I’ve been reflecting more about what independence and freedom mean. “Home of the free” is a common saying in our country, but what does it mean to be free? What does it mean to be free as a follower of Jesus Christ? As a Christian I am formed by the Scriptures of the Bible and one of the passages that speaks of freedom is from Galatians 5:1, “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Growing up in the church I heard a lot about freedom in Christ, but most of this was around the idea of freedom from sin. It went something like this; Jesus died on the cross and in his death we have been set free from our sin. But over the years I have seen that this isn’t the whole story. This is a Western, individualistic interpretation of the gospel and the cross. In our work with migrants from Iran and Afghanistan almost all of them sp