Inner Freedom

My friend, Brian, commented on one of my posts that he feels "amazement" at the extent to which people tend to judge themselves more harshly than others do.  I am glad and grateful that he, a close long-term friend, has seen a lot of my personal messiness and judges, nevertheless, that I am a "terrific" person.
Really, that makes me happy.

But his comment prompted me to think a bit more about what made my adult "conversion" experience so personally significant.  I have already shared much of the content of this experience:  it was a genuine recogntion of my goodness, or to put it another way, loveableness.  Perhaps I had been excessively harsh with myself over the years, and perhaps other people never, or only occasionally, looked at me and thought, "she is a jerk."  But ultimately, whether it was reasonable or not, this is what I came to think of myself...deeply.  The ability to recognize my own fundamental goodness did not come easily to me, and so when I finally did recognize it, or experience it (more accurately), I felt a tremendous sense of inner freedom.  I have come to see, not only in my own story but in the stories of others, that a lack of self-love, a sense of one's own badness, can be tough shackle to break.  And it is a shackle. 

A fundamental story of the Judeo-Christian tradition is the story of the Exodus.  It is the story of a people who had lost their land and liberty--everything.  But the God who loved them passionately would not abandon them.  Instead, God acts in history to free them.  The story is a powerful one...and a universal one.  It speaks not only to those people who are, like the Israelites, enslaved by oppressive economic and political systems (which it does, strongly).  It speaks also to the human person who is inwardly enslaved.  And it speaks also of the God whose dream is human freedom.