Sin Soon Then....

[free-duhm] –noun

1. the state of being free or at liberty rather than inconfinement or under physical restraint: He won his freedom after a retrial.
2. exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc.
3. the power to determine action without restraint.
4. political or national independence.
5. personal liberty, as opposed to bondage or slavery: a slave who bought his freedom.
6. exemption from the presence of anything specified (usually followed by from ): freedom from fear.
7. the absence of or release from ties, obligations, etc.
8. ease or facility of movement or action: to enjoy the freedom of living in the country.
9. frankness of manner or speech.
10. general exemption or immunity: freedom from taxation.
11. the absence of ceremony or reserve.
12. a liberty taken.
13. a particular immunity or privilege enjoyed, as by a city or corporation: freedom to levy taxes.
14. civil liberty, as opposed to subjection to an arbitrary or despotic government.
15. the right to enjoy all the privileges or special rights of citizenship, membership, etc., in a community or the like.
16. the right to frequent, enjoy, or use at will: to have the freedom of a friend's possessions.
17. the power to exercise choice and make decisions without constraint from within or without; autonomy; self-determination.

One of the things I find extraordinary to receive are compliments which tell me how open and transparent I am in my writing.

I understand that some folk fear exposing themselves in public, (shucks that sounds like I'm a flasher!) but why would that be?

I started life as a shy little wimp, actually a shy big wimp, but I felt little and presented a classic victim attitude, which all those nasty bigger (as in bolder) boys used to make them feel even bigger and bolder.

In other words I was the punch bag for my school.

As we all grew up their tales of bravado grew pro rata to my introspective submission and by age thirteen I was bound for an ignominious defeat in the rest of my life.

Then one small chance meeting changed not only my thinking, but my manner of projecting myself, and I went from 'school wimp' to 'kid most likely to get you beaten up by his thick but dangerous older friends' in a matter of weeks.

Suddenly nobody tried to victimise me any more.

By age 15 a friend and I (and as he is now a highly respected head of a substantial Australian iconic institution, I will spare his name)....... anyway, Nigel and I realised we were doing all the things that the other kids dreamt of and boasted about, but never actually managed. (OK Nigel, maybe someone will guess, but I am anonymous behind my avatar (unless you dig around) and you stopped talking to me when I came to faith and you came to fame, so hard luck cobber!)

I digress, why are folk so afraid of showing who they really are?

Well in an earlier hub (Pedestal of Deception) I hope I conveyed the way we all hide behind our devised images, and rarely reach honesty about ourselves to ourselves, let alone those who know us, or thought they knew us.

I decided long ago that what you saw with me, would be what you got, of course when you take this unfashionable stance one spends years losing most everything you once thought you owned, because folk hate to see transparent honesty, and shy away from you.

That hurts........ But like the slogan goes, no pain, no gain!

So what do we gain with transparency? - Freedom

Is probably one of the most used, but possibly least understood phrases Christ spoke.

On one level, probably the most recognised level of interpretation, it refers to the fact that once you submit your authority to Christ, you are free from the worlds plans for your future, and released from the bondage claimed over your life from your past sins and indiscretions.

But before I came to faith and trust in Christ, I had come to freedom by way of the truth, in secular terms, in that I had seen in the early 80's that society was sick and tired of hype, lies and prevarication, and as such would pay handsomely for any display of integrity in business.

I became a professional truth teller, albeit tempered with an ability to tell you a direct lie by editing the truth or making suggestive truth.

The human brain will join up the gaps to form what it wants to believe if you only provide indicators that will lead the average human to reach a predetermined (by you) conclusion.

Someone today wrote a compliment in a comment,  that provoked this hub, they said that my articles made them think, which is great, because that's the whole reason why I write at all.

Our society has carefully moulded the the people to such an extent that we seem to have lost our capacity to think for ourselves. I would go as far as to say that any display of individual thought and expression will be either ridiculed or cause for observation, if made by any public figure.

In Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, free speech and though was stifled by an oppressive regime of informers who would report any infraction of 'right thinking' to the 'authorities' in return for loyalty concessions in their enslavement to the system.

It still works today, and more worryingly it functions best in our societies which advertise themselves as bastions of freedom. 

In today's world castigation is preferred to incarceration, and character assassination will isolate one much faster than persecution could, indeed persecution actually strengthens those who stand for free speech, whereas incrimination by invective is more debiilitating and longer lasting.

The implanted suggestion that such and such person is guilty of whatever heinous crime or perversion that is currently taboo has long served as a manner of destroying your opponents whilst never losing your smile or perceived integrity.

Anyhow, let's get back to truth rather than discuss deception.

Christ suffered a bad image problem from both the Romans and the Jewish leaders, which is understandable because He came into their world and upset the whole thing as surely as He overturned the merchants stalls in the Temple.

He still does, we still do.

The Romans had control of the civil authority and the Sanhedrin had control of the religious authority and frankly everyone in control was relatively cosy with the situation.

The people on the other hand were a smouldering powder keg waiting to explode (although of course 'we' had not invented gunpowder at that time, so it's a hypothetical expression rather than a statement) but as the populace were kept in submission by cold steel, amazing military strength and the frequent fact that anybody who was a threat to things, got hung on trees to die, meant objectors were few

The Sanhedrin relied upon an obedient mass who knew that they could not read and needed someone to stand between them, the great unwashed, and God.

Then Christ turns up, in their century, and right on cue, to fulfil a long standing prediction of a coming Messiah.

Initially they can ignore him, after all he has a low profile, does not come from a leading family, and is supposedly uneducated. He also shows no sign of fostering rebellion amongst the sheeple, so they can safely dismiss him as just another raving loony claiming to be the chosen one, and rest in the sure knowledge that sooner or later he will drift off into the Sinai never to be seen again, followed by a few other loonies.

But this Christ does have a very disturbing trait, in that he can talk to people and bring them to recognition of their sins without ever actually pointing the finger.

This unnerves the Sanhedrin, who are used to never having anyone question their legality, nor feeling conviction when confronted by some uneducated peasant who talks in parables and tells stories that could almost be accounts of what they have done, to feel bad about.

Ultimately they employ some spin doctors 33AD style, who cook up a story that not only incriminates Christ, but puts him on a tree to die.

End of story...... except He came back to prove the point.

What He spoke about inspired a few good men to pass it forward, and when they also suffered the same fates, others took up the progression of faith and set about getting even more folk to question how things are done and look at how things should be done instead.

Maybe better to say; how things were meant to be done instead.

So if what I write makes anyone think, thank you, and keep thinking.

It may be painful and it will definitely change your life dramatically, but if you live long enough you will come out of the other side of personal desolation into the clear daylight of transparency and truth, you will know how to speak the truth in such a way that your opponents decide they best leave you alone rather than try to escape your discernment.

The truth will set you free, but most folk prefer their cosy cells of deception.

Well that is  just a humour that I found driving through rush hour Penang, where there are many Chinese folk living.

Suddenly there was a van beside me with this name on it: 'Sin Soon Then' and it was almost like the enemy was whispering in ones ear... I could not resist it, and grabbed the snap for a hub, but frankly you cannot hang a whole hub on a chance sighting of a weird name that has a completely different connotation in English.... so I used it here.

I also pasted a long section of the definition of freedom, which frankly I dispute. Not that the definition is inaccurate, but that it misses the spiritual aspect of freedom, verses liberty.

Christ set me free, so in world terms I have freedom, but the act of setting me free was to release me from my worldly 'freedom', a freedom to make whatever of my life, good or bad. To treat other well or worse, to protect rather than provoke, to decide for myself, within the rule of human law, how I would interact with others.

But the liberty I hold in Christ is much deeper than that.

It allows me to escape the effects of natural law and to expect and have the ability to cause changes in the natural order of things, provided that my life is lived under His authority and power to carry out the will of the Father.

It gives us access to His supernatural spiritual power, as believers in authority are empowered by the Holy Spirit.

So any believer who is under His authority and power, is exempt from the worlds authority.

We are commanded to obey their rules, but in order to humour 'them' only.

Once someone grasps THAT truth, then fighting to maintain earthly truths is simpler to do, no matter how much you get rejected and scorned.