Free but Loved

       It is tough being a kid. You are learning about and exploring the world around you. Things like what goes up must come down, mud and carpeting do not mix well, and grown ups do not always mean what they say. Take the word free for instance. When a parent says that there is a free weekend, a little boy has dreams of spending endless hours living the life depicted in Calvin and Hobbes. What a parent really means is nothing is planned so what a great weekend to clean the garage or wash all the windows. A parent might say a child is free to go out and play, but does not mean that he is free to jump of off the shed roof  holding onto a kite to see if he can fly. A child may be free to speak, but not to tell his grandmother that the meatloaf is gross. Even teenagers learn that a free period at school does not mean they are free to have rolling chair races down the hallway, but they are free to do their homework in silence. A child quickly understands that there are boundaries to the word free. While a child might not always grasp the reason for the boundary, respect for it is quickly learned.

      Surprisingly, we as adults often have never very fully outgrown our childhood understanding of the word free. Oh, we understand one is not free to eat all a whole package of cookies without gaining a few pounds. We just now morph what we are free to do. The law of consequences only applies to certain sins or issues. We can watch what we want, go where we want, and do what we want with our bodies because we are free. We go even further in deluding ourselves, by blaming other people or, even worse, God for the resulting mess.  Our own childhood experiences tell us that our delusion is not logical. Just because we want to be free to do whatever we want does not mean we are, no matter what anyone says.
    
     Like it or not, being free in Christ is not license to do something that would displease God. I once heard in a sermon when I was small "Imagine that God was sitting there next to you. Would you still be doing...?" and you fill in the blank with a certain activity or thought.  Now you might join the resounding cry of "legalism" that is echoing through the church concerning the idea of God given boundaries or standards. Some how the idea of there actually being standards in the Bible has become a bad thing.

    Remember telling your child not to talk back to an adult or tell grandma that the meatloaf is gross? People might argue that speaking his mind is not necessarily bad. What if he had a good point? What if it was true? After all, the child was only exercising his freedom of speech. We all know that talking back and being disrespectful are bad traits for a child to have. Without loving correction the child will grow up without respect for authority or himself. He will think it is okay to do something that hurts others, all in the name of being free. So, if we as adults have standards for our children, does it not stand to reason that God would have standards for His children as well.

      Standards are the loving way that God guides us from things that would harm us. Whether we want to realize it or not. We are free but thankfully we are loved as well.