Yes it’s true. I have a crush. But before you start thinking “well jeeze, this is an inappropriate place to broadcast that,” let me tell you a little about him. He’s brave. He’s super smart. Dashing and charming. A poet who speaks several languages. Someone who will do absolutely anything for freedom. Oh and did I mention he lived about 800 years ago?
William Wallace was a 13th century Scottish knight who fought during the First War of Scottish
Independence, made popular by the 1995 insta-classic Braveheart. And while much of the movie is less than accurate (The Times ranked it the second most historically inaccurate film of all time), it provides us with some incredibly important lessons.
The most important thing to Wallace is freedom. He lives and dies for his people’s freedom. And as I look around in our world today, I see that fight all over the place. Look at the Middle East and Northern Africa. The people in those nations are crying out, begging, demanding their God-given right to freedom. And while bloody and deadly, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful because the people of this world are moaning and grumbling and fighting for what is theirs. They are willing to die for what so many of us have and take for granted.
But this isn’t a blog about freedom in America and why we’re so great (although ps- America and our freedoms here are amazing, and I am truly thankful I was born in this nation). There is a much deeper and truer freedom that can be ours if we claim it.
If you read Exodus, you’ll see that time after time the Israelites complain to Moses for taking them out of Egypt and into the Wilderness. But hello- you were a slave in Egypt!!! Yet the Israelites repeatedly state that it would be better for them to live as slaves than die free but hungry. And that is what all too many of us have settled for today-full but slaves. We settle for church on Sunday. We settle for the job and paycheck we have. We settle for the girl or guy we’ve been dating for 3 years and it just seems like the “right thing” to marry him or her. We settle and we settle and we settle. And God weeps and weeps and weeps for us.
The definition of freedom is “the power to determine action without restraint.” How many people can truthfully say they are living this way? For some, laws dictate their action- I have to go to this church at this time and wear this outfit and serve in this way and tithe this much, etc etc. For some, addictions or their friends/family. For others, fear. Fear that maybe God won’t give you His best. Fear that you could never be more than you are now. Fear that freedom will hurt too much or that it won’t be worth it somehow.
But fear is stupid. Because Jesus already won our fight for freedom. So it’s already ours to claim and live in. It is for FREEDOM that Christ has set us free (Galatians 5:1). Christ fought and died so that we could be FREE. Yet we allow others to lie and tell us otherwise. So we must fight and choose to live in freedom. We must not allow others to take it away from us. Wallace understood this. At one point in the movie, in what looks about to me an impossible victory, Wallace says to the English commanders, “Go back to England and tell them there that Scotland’s sons and daughters are theirs no more. Tell them Scotland is free.” In order for there to be real freedom, we must first acknowledge that we are in fact free. And once we realize that- truly realize that- it’s impossible for us not to fight for others who are still in slavery.
Now Wallace’s fight for freedom doesn’t end well. He’s disemboweled and dies a horrible and painful death. But it’s worth it. It’s worth it because he understood that a day in freedom is better than a thousand years in bondage. He understood that sometimes freedom and the fight for it hurt. He dies literally screaming Freedom.
Yes, the fight for freedom may be bloody and dangerous and painful. But ultimately, it’s beautiful and it’s necessary. As believers we are free. It’s time for us to act like it. And it’s time for us to fight for those that are still in slavery.
