Very
often when we talk about the concept of freedom, our minds refer to the freedom
of land. The concept of land with respect to the medieval age can be referred
to the concept of feudalism. For the medieval civilization, a land is a very
essential since a land speaks of their identity or what can be denoted as
rootedness. For the medieval and Christian civilization, therefore, it’s
important for them to have freedom in their land. They view a free land as a
place where they can freely worship the true God, a place where they can be at
rest or feel at home, and also a place for them to practice their calling in
life or God’s purpose for their life. In general words, a freedom for the
medieval civilization is understood as the ability to freely fulfill or
accomplish their destiny.
In
the world today, people views freedom in a very different way to how the
medieval civilization views the concept of freedom. For the people today,
freedom was understood as the ability to be free to do whatever we wanted to
do. This view of freedom, being contradictory to the view of freedom in the
medieval era, is actually leading us to the mindset of slavery where they were
not able to accomplish anything. The human will tend to follow the human nature
of being lazy and staying in their comfort zone. This laziness of human being
will eventually leads to failures; moreover, when they realize that they’re
failing, it’s often too late. Without the right mindset or view of freedom,
people will not be able to accomplish their destiny or the purpose of God in
life.
People
should understand that the right thing should be used in the right way such
that the right thing of freedom should be used in the right way for achieving
our destiny in life, especially accomplishing the purpose of God for us in our
life rather than to use it for the sake of laziness and accomplishing nothing.
When the people were able to view the concept of freedom in the right way, they
will then be able to accomplish their destiny and the purpose of God in their
life; furthermore, they will be able to accomplish many great things in their
life. People should also not forget that they should use their freedom to
glorify God by worshipping Him.
As a
personal application, I’m very amazed and inspired by how the Christian martyrs
fight for their freedom to worship God and to accomplish their destiny for
their life of spreading the Gospel since they have been called by God to spread
the Gospel. To the point of death they still put so much value to their
freedom. On the other hand, I, who was granted freedom easily by God, do not
appreciate it well by using my freedom in the wrong way rather than using it
for the glory of God and for God’s purpose in my life. I realize one of the
human nature is that people tend not to be grateful for what they have received
freely. After learning from the martyrs,
I was really inspired to use my freedom that God have given me freely in the
right way so that I may accomplish God’s calling for me in my life which will
never lead me to failures, but success, and that I may glorify the Name of God.
As a
conclusion, in the modern days the view of freedom seems to be ironic. Since
the people nowadays views freedom as the ability to do anything they want, they
will never be able to accomplish their destiny in their life. When compare to
the right meaning of freedom which is the ability to freely achieve one’s
destiny, it shows that we actually have the mindset of a slave with no freedom
to achieve their destiny. Freedom as a Christian was not free, especially
during the martyrdom period but, they were willing to fight even until the
point of death for the freedom to freely worship God and to fulfill the destiny
as a Christian; yet, today we don’t appreciate what have been given to us
freely. Because God have given us our freedom freely, we should therefore be
grateful for it by using our freedom to glorify God’s Name as well and to
accomplish our destiny or God’s calling in our life as well such that we will
be successful in our life.