I created and posted this cartoon a year or two ago. Some thought I was making a comment on Guantanamo. No. I was using a Guantanamo-like image to make a comment about the church. We sing and pray to be ransomed. We long for freedom. Liberation is our dream. But often our captivity is self-imposed. What if we really understood that we are already free indeed and lived accordingly?
My name is David Hayward, and I am the nakedpastor. I am a graffiti artist on the walls of religion.
Or as Bob Marley sang, “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our mind.”
great quote Thomas.
I’ve been preaching an enitre series on this very topic for nearly the last 8 months now. I’m preaching verse by verse through the Book of Galatians where Paul argues for liberty. It seems to go in one ear and out the other. Very frustrating. Thanks for sharing this illustration and reminding me I’m not alone in this.
In May of this year, I sat in a church staff meeting and said “this is not working for me anymore.” Your image says more about what is not working than I have been able to say over these months.
Thanks for you contribution to this important discussion. You inspire me to contribute more of my own in 2011.
i want to be free…
thanks bill. and tom. jeremy: you are!
You must understand that you are bound before you can be free. I should know, I was there for 59 years before finding my freedom. Thanks for continuing to inspire.
David, you are a heretic and you are going straight to hell.
Or what you are saying is really important. After I saw this cartoon I started reading Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship, and in the first few chapters he is discussing really similar topics, how we are more loyal to “our” god than to the law-diminishing, tradition-cutting Christ Jesus. I think this cartoon is straight in line with that thought.