The Gift of Freedom

Robert W. Jenson says in his Systematic Theology, “Faith as my act is that I give up my attained self in order to receive myself from the Coming One who just as such undoes all security. But when I try to perform this act, I of course achieve the opposite, for I necessarily do it within my project of self-securing, even if in this case religiously.”
This is exactly what I have been coming to realize. I felt myself becoming a stoic by my own might in order that I might achieve Christianity. I gave up all I knew to manipulate and get the thing I wanted; God. It is not so bad to desire God. Isn’t that what we sing? “You are all I want. You are all I long for. Nothing I desire compares with you.” Don’t we teach that we should throw off everything that entangles us? My combination of these two formative Christian teachings lead me to desire God with the only thing I thought I had. Kierkegaard said that there is a double-movement to faith. First you give everything up, and then you receive everything back as a gift. Fear and Trembling is itself written by one (Johannes de Silentio) who cannot reason himself and think himself into faith. Jenson clarifies Kierkegaard’s leap of faith by saying the gift undoes all security. As I found out, the gift of the Coming One is really that he came so that I can give up my attained self. In this giving up, all security vanishes. Security is that part of a person who reserves the right to take forceful action against someone or something that threaten the perceived well being of the self. In the coming of the Coming One I have the option of giving that up. It is possible to give up everything you have except your own security. I kept my security and gave up all that I had, honestly ignorant that I maintained security. Performing the faith, I was enslaved to my own security and I fought to control myself knowing this was the demand of God. Thanks be to God whose revelation continues, I have realized that security is the enemy of the gift of freedom. To give up yourself to God is to be unable to retain security in case God does something wrong. It is pure love, undefiled union. This faith trusts God in whatever happens. I knows and sees the threats it use to trust, but now new eyes have caused a revelatory transformation of those objects. They now appear as gifts.