t is a fact no one can deny-today freedom stands unchallenged as the supreme goal and value of the Western world. Scholars and philosophers have investigated and debated it endlessly; it is the catchword of every politician, the secular gospel of our economic free- enterprise system and the foundation of all our cultural activities. Freedom is the one value for which many people, by their words and actions, often seem prepared to die. During the era of the Cold War, leaders of the West divided the world into two regional camps-the free world and the unfree world-and were willing to fight a nuclear war to defend this sacred ideal.

For many years now I have traveled throughout the world as a conference speaker, seminar teacher, university lecturer, government consultant, pastoral counselor, motivational speaker and trainer for many organizations. Whether it was in Africa, South America, Asia, North America or the Caribbean, it was amazing to discover that people are all the same. In the poorest village of Brazil or the wealthiest country clubhouse of the aristocracy, every human heart cries and yearns for the same thing: a chance to fulfill his or her dreams and desires. Even the poorest man has a dream. All humans possess the same desire-to be free to pursue the vision and dream in their heart.

However, for most of the over six billion people on Planet Earth, this dream will end in a hopeless nightmare, not because of their lack of desire or willingness to see their dream become reality, but because of man-made circumstances and self-imposed limitations that gravitate against this desire and prevent the discovery, release and maximization of their potential. The human spirit was endowed by its Creator with the need to be free to pursue its purpose and to experience the fulfillment that comes with maximizing its potential. Freedom is the pursuit of the human spirit.

The word freedom has become common, overused and abused, like the word love, but little understood. Much of what we call freedom is but a corruption of our desire to have license to live without laws and accountability. The echoes of the cry for freedom are heard throughout the halls of history as individuals, generations, communities and nations seek to throw off what they perceive as restrictive yokes and burdens of oppression.

Throughout history the accounts of peoples and nations fighting and paying the ultimate price for this illusive quality give evidence of its value to the human experience. Millions have died in wars, civil unrest, uprisings and rebellions in pursuit of its promise. More human life has been sacrificed in the name of freedom than any other passion. The French

Revolution was born out of the desire to throw off the yoke of monarchal oppression. The Russian Revolution was ignited by the same spark. The breaking away and formation of the Republic of the United States was fueled by the hope for freedom. The death-wish commitment of notable men like Mahatma Gandhi to see the great nation of India throw off the yoke of colonialism was propelled by the cry for freedom to determine one’s own destiny. The great Civil Rights Movement of our generation, inspired by the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr., was also conceived in the womb of the desire for freedom.

Even now after entering the twenty-first century, the struggle for individual, community and national freedom continues. However, despite thousands of years of human effort to achieve an enduring and stable state of freedom, most of humanity finds itself still enslaved to bondages that hold it back and suffocates personal and national dreams. The flower children and hippies of the sixties demanded their brand of freedom, and became prisoners of the drug culture and slaves to materialism. These baby boomers produced a generation of children after their kind who fell prey to a more diabolical drug web, which strangles the life out of their purpose for life.

We now enter the age of computer technology with its promises of freedom of communication, information advancement, increased productivity and cyberspace travel over the Internet. This explosion of technological progress has rendered the twenty-first- century technocrat an overburdened fish caught in the worldwide web of confusion in an ocean of excessive information. Oh, to be free!

Why is freedom so difficult to achieve? Why does international freedom evade our experience? Why does the scientific advancement and progressive technology of our world produce more bondages than freedom? Why do we become prisoners of our own inventions and victims of our modern products? Could it be that we have misunderstood the principle of freedom? Could it be that we have confused freedom with something else?

After over forty years of study and exploration of the complex nature of human development, helping countless thousands to learn the principles and skills to improve their lives, I have come to the conclusion that the greatest pursuit in the human heart is the pursuit of freedom. The human heart has a passion to fulfill a meaningful purpose-but only a few find it.

Everyone cries for freedom and desires to be free. However, most of us who cry for freedom do not understand freedom, or the nature of liberty. It is a tragic reality that we do not understand the qualifications of true freedom. True freedom demands great responsibility, accountability, a spirit of stewardship, maturity, wisdom and character.

This book examines why freedom has become the most powerful value for mankind and why we have such an extraordinary commitment to it. Freedom is a natural concept that is

foreign to most human spirits. For most of human history, and for most of the non-Western world, freedom has not been considered a value worthy of consideration or a desirable goal. Other values were and, in some cases, still are more important than freedom-values such as the pursuit of power, glory, honor, nationalism, imperial grandeur, militarism and valor in warfare, hedonism, material progress, altruism-and the list continues. But in most of these cultures, freedom was never included as a value.

In fact, most human languages did not possess a word for the concept of freedom before contact with the Western world. Japan is typical. The current Japanese word for freedom was only introduced during the nineteenth century when the country opened to the West.

Freedom is the central theme and value of Christianity. Being redeemed and set free from sin, bondage and fear is the goal of Christianity.

In this book, the basic perspective and argument is that freedom was generated from the experience of slavery. This includes all forms of slavery and oppression. Freedom became a principal value in human experience as a powerful, shared vision of life-a response to and result of the human experience of slavery. This oppressive spirit of slavery manifested itself in other forms such as serfdom and the roles of masters, slaves and nonslaves. In fact, slavery did not produce freedom, but rather awakened this sleeping characteristic of human nature.

The basic premise of this book is that freedom is more difficult than slavery because it demands more of us than oppression demands. We will explore the definition and misconception of freedom, and examine the nature and effects of oppression. This work addresses the concept of freedom and its implications for the individual, the community, the state and the nation. This subject will be addressed using the biblical model of the Hebrew exodus and the Israelites’ transitional development from slaves throughout the creation of a sovereign free nation under the leadership of Moses and Joshua. We will discover that there is no greater burden than freedom, no heavier load than liberty. We will understand why personal freedom and national freedom are so difficult to achieve, and why oppression is so attractive. We will come to conclude that freedom, like love and beauty, is one of those values better experienced than defined. Join me on a journey to freedom.

Introduction

The person who cannot see the ultimate becomes a slave to the immediate.

here is no greater burden than freedom, no heavier load than liberty. The paradoxical nature of this statement echoes the complexity of the concept of freedom. Freedom is like beauty and love-it is difficult to define, but you know it when you experience it. As we wade into the shallow shores of the ocean of the twenty-first century and take on the responsibility of custodians of a new millennium, the cry for individual, community, cultural and national freedom resonates from the human struggles of the twentieth century.

Over six billion people call our fragile earth home, and nearly everyone would claim that they are free without any working definition of the concept. Freedom is one of the most misunderstood ideals in human experience, and therefore it is rarely attained. The majority of humanity will never experience true freedom, even though freedom is the purpose and reason for man’s existence.

Freedom, though little understood by most, has become the pursuit of man. Today we are living through another explosive diffusion of this ideal. The social, political and economic developments in Eastern Europe at the latter end of the twentieth century herald only the latest and most dramatic phase of the commitment of people all over the world to freedom. Since World War II, scores of countries all over the Third World and Far East have entered the struggle for freedom, embraced its value and sometimes lived by it. There is hardly a country whose leaders, however dubious, do not claim that they are pursuing the ideal of freedom. It is important to understand that the concept of freedom was not invented by man but for man. Freedom is not a Western or Eastern ideal. It is a biblical concept introduced by God Himself as the very essence and purpose of man’s existence. Thus, freedom is basic to man’s fulfillment and critical to his sense of value. The spirit of freedom is synonymous with the spirit of man and resides inherent in his nature. It is for this reason that the desire, passion and pursuit of freedom are natural to mankind.

Oppression, suppression and any other form of slavery or any attempt to restrict the development and expression of the human spirit will always awaken the sleeping giant called freedom. This is why any form of slavery, whether by forced labor, ideology, a political regime, economic oppression, domestic abuse or spiritual or religious oppression is the ultimate sin against the human spirit.

David Brion Davis and his Yale colleague Edmund Morgan, in their book The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, demonstrated the enormous importance of slavery in the social and intellectual reconstruction and reconfiguration of freedom in our modern context. Davis attempted to explain why, after taking slavery for granted since the beginning of its history in the West, in a remarkably short period of time during the late eighteenth century, slavery was redefined as the greatest evil, a moral and socioeconomic scourge that had to be exterminated. His conclusion was that the promotion and protection of personal liberty was the highest virtue of man. In essence, slavery does not destroy freedom; rather, it magnifies its presence and value. Yet the question is, What is freedom?