Legalistic Strait Jacket

Nothing can choke the heart and soul out of walking with God like legalism. Rigidity is the most certain sign that the Disciplines have spoiled. The disciplined ...

Freedom Gone Wrong

Self-fulfillment soon grows into a quest for self-indulgence with a vocabulary of I, Me, Mine and self-indulgence, in turn, soon becomes unbridled. The ...

Freedom Is Not Autonomy

I particularly like to warn my American audiences about this. Freedom is not the same thing as autonomy. Freedom does not mean I am a law unto myself. ...

Too Much of a Good Thing

Our souls may receive infinite hurt, and be rendered incapable of all virtue, merely by the use of innocent and lawful things. What is more innocent than ...

Exhilerating Obedience

Freedom does not mean the absence of constraints or moral absolutes. Suppose a skydiver at 10,000 feet announces to the rest of the group, "I'm ...

Are Liberals Really Tolerant?

A woman writing the television station where my commentaries are broadcast began her letter, "Gentlemen and Other Scum." She then proceeded ...

Discipline before Freedom

Our habitual misuse of words has led us to imagine that Christian freedom consists in the moment, and we protest against anything that would put fetters ...

Freedom from Religion

Edwin Gaustad, professor of history at the University of California, Riverside, asserted in 1985:

Some recent discussion has suggested that the founding ...

What Kind of Freedom?

A limitation of freedom is given by the fact of fellowship because the individual is created for community. No one lives alone from the fact that he has ...

Liberty and Justice for Me

The quest for freedom is becoming personal rather than political. It is a quest of self-hood, and its outcome is no better. When self-denial goes out ...