True Freedom—From What Source?
“It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step. Correct me, O Jehovah.”—JEREMIAH 10:23, 24.
1, 2. How do most people view freedom, but what else needs to be considered?
NO DOUBT you appreciate true freedom. You want to be free to express your own views, free to decide where and how you live. You want to choose the work you do, choose your food, music, friends. You have preferences about many things, large and small. No normal person wants to be enslaved to dictatorial rulers, with little or no free choice.
2 However, would you not also want a world where others as well as you would benefit from true freedom? Would you not want a world where freedom would be protected so that everyone’s life could have the fullest expression? And if it was possible, would you not also want a world free from fear, crime, hunger, poverty, pollution, sickness, and war? Surely such freedoms are highly desirable.
3. Why do we value freedom?
3 Why do we humans feel so strongly about freedom? The Bible states: “Where the spirit of Jehovah is, there is freedom.” (2 Corinthians 3:17) So Jehovah is the God of freedom. And since he created us in his ‘image and likeness,’ he endowed us with free will so that we could appreciate and benefit from freedom.—Genesis 1:26.
Freedom Abused
4, 5. How has freedom been abused throughout history?
4 Throughout history millions of people have been enslaved, tortured, or killed because others misused free will. The Bible relates that some 3,500 years ago, “the Egyptians made the sons of Israel slave under tyranny. And they kept making their life bitter with hard slavery.” (Exodus 1:13, 14) The Encyclopedia Americana says that in the fourth century B.C.E., slaves in Athens and two other Greek cities outnumbered the free population by about 4 to 1. This source also says: “In Rome the slave had originally no rights. He could be put to death for the smallest misdemeanor.” Compton’s Encyclopedia notes: “In Rome slave labor was the foundation of the state. . . . In the fields the slaves often worked in chains. At night they were bound together and shut into great prisons, which were half buried under the ground.” Since many slaves had once been free, imagine the bitterness of those broken lives!
5 For centuries, Christendom engaged in an oppressive slave trade. Says The World Book Encyclopedia: “From the 1500’s to the 1800’s, the Europeans shipped about 10 million black slaves from Africa to the Western Hemisphere.” In this 20th century, millions of captives were worked to death or killed in Nazi concentration camps as a matter of government policy. The victims included many of Jehovah’s Witnesses who were imprisoned because they refused to support the murderous Nazi regime.
Bondage to False Religion
6. How did false religion enslave people in ancient Canaan?
6 There also exists the bondage that results from adherence to false religion. For instance, in ancient Canaan, children were sacrificed to Molech. It is said that a furnace blazed inside a huge image of this false god. Live children were thrown into the outstretched arms of the image, plunging through them into the fire below. Even some Israelites practiced this false worship. God says that they made ‘their sons and their daughters pass through the fire to Molech, a thing that He did not command them, neither did it come up into His heart to do this detestable thing.’ (Jeremiah 32:35) What benefit did Molech bring to his worshipers? Where are those Canaanite nations and the worship of Molech today? All of them have disappeared. That was false worship, worship based not on truths but on lies.—Isaiah 60:12.
7. What hideous practice was part of Aztec religion?
7 Centuries ago in Central America, the Aztecs were enslaved to false religion. There were personal gods, natural forces were worshiped as gods, various functions in daily life each had its god, plants had their gods, even suicides had a god. The book The Ancient Sun Kingdoms of the Americas relates: “The government of Aztec Mexico was organized from top to bottom so as to be able to sustain, and thereby mollify, the unseen powers with as many human hearts as it was possible to give them. Blood was the drink of the gods. To obtain appropriate prisoner victims as sacrifice for the gods, there were ceaseless little wars.” When a large pyramid temple was dedicated in 1486, thousands of victims “were lined up in rows waiting to be spread-eagled over the sacrificial stone. Their hearts were cut out and held briefly to the sun” to appease the sun-god. The World Book Encyclopedia says: “Worshipers sometimes ate portions of a victim’s body.” Yet, those practices did not save the Aztec Empire or its false religion.
8. What did a tour guide have to say about a modern slaughter far greater than that which took place among the Aztecs?
8 Visitors were once touring a museum where a display case portrayed Aztec priests cutting out a young man’s heart. When the tour guide explained the exhibit, a gasp went up from some in the tour group. The guide then said: “I see that you are upset by the Aztec practice of sacrificing young men to pagan gods. Yet, in this 20th century, millions of young men have been sacrificed to the god of war. Is that any better?” It is a fact that in war the religious leaders of all nations pray for victory and bless the armies even though people of the same religion are often on opposing sides killing one another.—1 John 3:10-12; 4:8, 20, 21; 5:3.
9. What practice takes more young lives than any other in history?
9 The sacrificing of the young to Molech, to Aztec gods, or to war is being exceeded by the killing of unborn babies in abortions, some 40 or 50 million a year worldwide. The number aborted in just the past three years is larger than the hundred million people killed in all the wars of this century. Each year, several times more babies are aborted than all the people murdered in 12 years of Nazi rule. In recent decades thousands of times more babies have been aborted than all those sacrificed to Molech or to Aztec gods. Yet many (if not most) of those who have an abortion, or who perform them, profess a religion.
10. What is another way that people are enslaved to false religion?
10 False religion enslaves people in other ways too. For example, many people believe that the dead are alive in the spirit world. One result of such a false belief is the fear and worship of dead ancestors to get supposed benefits from them. This enslaves people to witch doctors, spirit mediums, and clergymen who are called on supposedly to help the living appease the dead. Well might the question be asked, Is there any way out of such enslavement?—Deuteronomy 18:10-12; Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10.
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Throughout history some have misused their free will to enslave others