Freedom

I've recently been reading "The Last Battle" by C.S. Lewis, it is Book 7 in the Chronicles of Narnia. In this book there is an Ape named shift who is very clever and he is friends with a not so clever donkey named Puzzle. They come across a lion's skin and decide to dress Puzzle up and try and play him off as Aslan (the lion who is the character of God in the series) so that Shift can have all kinds of power for the sake of making changes he wants around Narnia. By and large it works.

There is a scene early on in the book where the ruse is pretty early on where Shift is explaining to some of the other animals in that part of the forest the deal that has been made with the neighboring country. In the deal various people of Narnia have been given to the neighboring country in exchange for money and goods that will be used to build up Narnia into the kind of nation it "ought" to be. After this shared the following exchange happens:

"But we don't want these things," said an old Bear. "We want to be free. And we want to hear Aslan speak himself."

"Now don't you start arguing," said the Ape, "for it's a thing I won't stand. I'm a Man; you're only a fat, stupid old Bear. What do you know about freedom? You think freedom means doing what you like. Well, you're wrong. That isn't true freedom. True freedom means doing what I tell you."

Huh! It sounds almost like something you'd hear from a government official these days. What is freedom to you? What do you think about when you hear expressions like, "Freedom in Christ"?