For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. (1 Peter 2:15- 16) When we live free in Christ, we are compelled to use that freedom for a greater good than our own. That is the premise underlying Peter’s statement about using freedom to do good as servants as opposed to using freedom as a cover-up for evil. When we stop trying to mask our flaws and shortcomings or even our past deeds with the freedom, that is opportunity, and turn those resources into something benefiting society, or most likely our community, as a whole, then we are living the life we were saved to. It should be clear that we should always seek to do the right thing for other people, at our expense of freedom; meaning that if we do everything for our own benefit and selfish reasons we are wasting our freedom and are slave to our own desires and therefore not really free, but living in the false guise of supposed freedom. Don’t discount me here, because I know being truly altruistic is an impossibility, but I also do realize how most of us capitalize on our freedom– with no regard to the freedom of others around us. The problem is that the Apostle Peter writes that we should live free to do good, but every time you do something good, you realize that you have one or more of those self absorbed, talentless, listless parasites who try to take advantage of the fact that you are trying to be good. Because no matter how hard we try to be good and not impose on the freedom of others and give them latitude to be free through a sacrifice of our freedom; that good you do, because it becomes such a pain to have that parasite around, becomes an evil you no longer want to deal with, so you stop doing that good work. Let me be clear here: a parasite is a person who takes the good work you do and either flips it negatively to discredit you; or takes advantage of your good work and drains the life out of you. We all either know a parasite or are the parasite. In fact, some of us became parasites because a parasite flipped our goodness in the first place. Some people out there make your “goodness” something that shouldn’t be shared and so we use our freedom in an evil and very narrowly self-gratifying way as a result. I would like nothing better than to grab those parasites and shake them so hard, in our freedom, until… let me not continue that sentence… Am I right? But whatever I’m thinking is flat out sinful, so don’t waste your time doing that. Instead, I want you to stare those parasites in the eyes and use your freedom to change people’s lives by serving others in a way that those parasites can’t comprehend. Blow their minds and their egos out of the water! The idea is really simple– reach people so that the parasites can’t say or do anything to change the disposition of good work you are doing in other people’s lives through your service to God. This is what our freedom should be used for. Let’s forget utilizing our freedom to vote or to buy McDonalds; rather, let us use it for doing good work in the world and shutting those parasites up from taking away the freedom that Christ gave us in His death. Go and live free by doing good.
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