Freedom in Five Minutes

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For many years I struggled to understand what we Christians mean by freedom. We talk about how Jesus sets you free, that faith brings freedom and yet we also talk about obedience to God’s law, or submission to his will which doesn’t sound much like freedom. At the same time I was aware of how much our culture values freedom, yet its ideas of personal freedom often clash with a longing for our societies to be a bit more cohesive and integrated, which would presumably require a certain limiting of personal freedom.

I suspected I wasn't alone in thinking about all this, and so a few years ago decided to think more deeply about the theme. What I discovered was that the Christian idea of freedom is so much richer, positive, and constructive than secular ideas of freedom, even though they sound superficially more attractive and liberating. The result was a book - Bound to be Free: The Paradox of Freedom, which was published by Bloomsbury last year.

A little while ago I gave a summary of the book in lecture form at a conference. Someone came up to me afterwards and said it would be a great idea to summarise the main ideas in a very short video as a bit of a taster for the full document. So that’s exactly what I’ve done. You’ll find the video here. It lasts only around five minutes, and hopefully gives you an idea of the basics of the argument and why Christian ideas of freedom work so much better than secular ones. Hope you enjoy it. 

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