Connect Article: Pictures of Freedom

Several years ago I saw a striking picture on the back page of a counseling brochure.  It was a drawing of a man in a prison cell who was seated on his bed with his head in his hands.  He was not moving.  Ironically the cell door was wide open, and the chain that held his left hand was ripped off the wall and was resting on the floor.  Yet the man was not moving.  Everything in the picture said he was free except the slump in his shoulders and his head in his hands, and the condition of his heart.  The prisoner first had to imagine that he was free to leave, then he would feel free, and then the first steps would be taken towards freedom.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was giving pictures of freedom to those imprisoned by anxiety, guilt or a guilty conscience, and confusion.  He was painting a picture within their imaginations that would give them the new world they could enter by faith.  The beauty of the imagination is that when we focus on the pictures, we enter the world of the pictures and the emotions of our hearts arise to match the pictures.  We can emotionally exist within that world and feel its security and care, setting the heart free.

But Jesus was not creating a false world for them.  Instead He was painting a picture for them of the world as it really was.  God did take care of humanity whether humanity trusted Him or not.  God’s care did not depend upon humanity’s faith.  Christ called them “men of little faith.”  In the Gospel of Matthew, that was a nice way of saying that they did not have any faith at all.  “Men of little faith” occurs in Matthew 6:30; 8:26; 14:31; 16:8.  Each time Christ pointed out the non-existence of faith.  For example, in Matthew 16:8 He rebuked them for not understanding His warning about the bread of the scribes and Pharisees, and also about not believing His own ability to multiply loaves miraculously. Howeover, our faith or lack thereof does not change the characteristics of God the Father.  God is still our provider and the God who is God the loving Father, who wants to teach how how to have a personal relationship with God, and who wants us to become the woman God intended, or the man God intended. By giving us pictures for our imagination all about God as the loving father He is, God is freeing us to walk out of our prison cell of anxiety, guilt, and confusion, setting the heart free.