Our Vision of Freedom

Freedom from Economic Slavery
and Freedom of Movement.
(David:) We live without giving our bodies
as slaves to the commercial system. We do
not job or make deals with people.
(Shekinah:) We already live in a micro
society of voluntary sharing. Wherever we go we share what we have - our experiences, our music, our love, a helping hand; and people share with us, what they are inspired to share.
(David:) We have freedom of movement to go wherever we feel God leads us. God has not led us to go to certain places yet because we are not ready for it, but we are learning and growing. We have proven to ourselves that our way of life works, but there is more for us to learn and greater challenges ahead yet.
I am of the opinion that the global commercial society will become more and more dictatorial and that it will attempt to encroach upon our freedom as well.
(Shekinah:) I very much identify with the social role Jesus chose to fill, judging from what we read in the records about him. It seems he learned to draw spiritual strength to say and do the right things, and he did so in a country that was under dictatorship. I want to learn that strength of love, and walking with God the way Jesus did helps me in that.

Freedom of Speech
(David:) We are used to fairly high level of freedom of speech and freedom of opinion, having grown up in western Europe. We place great importance on the freedom to get together with people and publicly speak about important issues, concerning society and people's outlook on life. In the course of our pilgrimage we soon saw that freedom of speech is not readily granted in most countries of the world, and that in fact it takes quite a bit of courage to exercise this freedom in so many places.
Most of the countries of the world are police states, where constitutional rights are ignored or neutralized in practice. In many countries of Africa and South-America we encountered police who tried to stop us from speaking in public about the corruption in society and its religious systems. We were jailed for speaking in the streets in Zambia.
It takes love to speak truth in the face of tyranny, it takes the motivation to help others to be free, not just to be free ourselves.

Freedom as a social vision.
(David:) Like many others we have the intuitive impression that all mankind is meant to be together and interact with each other in love and kindness, in an understanding of global brotherhood. Therefore Freedom involves the ability to fulfill this vision of global brotherhood, the spiritual strength to live it, which in consequence involves an awareness of obligation to others, instead of seeing Freedom merely as absence of restraint upon ourselves.
(Shekinah:) People can only be inspired to take part in a community or society of freedom. It cannot be forced through legislation, insisting on rights and boundaries.
It takes a willingness to give ourselves to others, a willingness to experiment and suffer when things are not as perfect as they could or should be.
(David:) Freedom must be personal but it is also a collective discovery. It is a challenge to spiritual growth for everyone. So there is still much work of inspiration ahead to help people see that Freedom is reachable for everyone, that we can have the spiritual strength to live together in love.

(See also: The Freedom Message of Jesus Christ.)