Today’s global community has never gone through times like these. We do our best to comply with restrictions intended to benefit the common good, but as they continue, so does our longing for a freer life. We keep hoping the pattern of confined personal living will end.

The longing for unconstrained activity is nothing new. Humanity has always been drawn to freedom, and people have always been faced with making choices: to accept restrictive living, or to overcome it—which begins with a shift away from restrictive thinking, but also recognizes that this does not give us license to do whatever we want.

An advocate for freedom from thousands of years ago told the Galatians about a choice they could make: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.” The Apostle Paul went on to say, “If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Galatians 5:1, 18, New King James Version).