Catholic philosopher Remi Brague makes an interesting observation: “In Spain, when a cab is for hire and looking for a customer, it has a flag of sorts on which is written ‘free’. For many of our contemporaries, the model of what ‘being free’ means is the way in which this cab is ‘free’. This means that it is empty, that it doesn’t go to any particular place.”

You are ‘free’ to take on board this definition of freedom, but where will
you end up? A cab that does nothing more than fly it's ‘free’ flag will end up not servicing any customers and will go bankrupt.

On his Slow Train Coming album, the songwriter Bob Dylan has a song with the following lyrics:

You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

On social media, you can come across stories from Uber drivers who ended up with a ‘customer from hell’. In chapter 8 of the Gospel of Luke, there is a story of Mary Magdalene who, however innocently, ended up with seven passengers who were truly from hell. The end result of their demonic joyride, at her expense, was going to be the total wreckage of her life. Whatever freedom she did have would be gone. Jesus comes along, and like his casting out of the money changers, he cleanses the temple of her innermost being and shows the demonic passengers the door.

Saul was on his way to Tarsus to wreck the lives of the Christians in that town, when he was thrown down from his high horse and eventually became the Apostle Paul. Commenting on his experience he says in Galatians 2:20, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” In 1 Corithians 3:16, he goes on to say, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” Paul, like Mary Magdalene, also received a passenger from Heaven accompanying him on his journey through life. Both of them, in the words of an old spiritual song, are now on that train ‘bound for glory’.

How do we handle the freedom Christ has given us? Cab drivers develop ‘street smarts’ because not everyone who is trying to get their attention is a fit passenger. Being selective as to who we allow into our personal space and take for a ride is, as an old car commercial said, ‘job 1’. “With freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore and be not entangled again in a yoke of servitude,” (Galatians 5:1). We must be careful to not squander the freedom that we have been given.