The Lie of Freedom

Freedom is everywhere right now and not just as a political idea, but as a lifestyle command: follow your desires, reject limits, define your own truth. But what if the “you” doing the choosing has been quietly trained by advertising, entertainment, and social media algorithms? I want to slow that word down and test it, because a lot of what gets called freedom today is simply influence dressed up as independence. 

We start with everyday programming, from childhood brand loyalty to the way TikTok trends can shape what we crave and buy. Then we go deeper into Scripture, walking through Mark chapter 5 and the haunting image of a man who can’t be chained yet lives among tombs, crying out and harming himself. He looks free on the outside, but his life proves he’s trapped. That story becomes a mirror for modern “do whatever you want” messaging and the hidden bondage it can produce: confusion, emptiness, isolation, and self-destruction. 

We also connect the theme to other lives that seem “free” by the world’s standards, touching on public stories like Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s conversion after years of depression and anxiety and Perez Hilton’s emotional wake-up call after serious illness. The thread running through all of it is simple: true freedom is not the absence of boundaries, it’s the presence of wholeness. Jesus restores, brings us back to our right mind, and sends us back to community and purpose. 

If this hit home, subscribe to Light of Life, share it with someone you love, and leave a review so more people can find it. What kind of freedom are you chasing right now, and where is it taking you?

Transcript

Welcome And Why We Gather

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everybody. Welcome to the Light of Life podcast. I'm your host, Rutendo. Thank you so much for tuning in today. We are going to have a wonderful time. And I am so excited about today's podcast. If you're new here, you may click the subscribe button to join our Light of Life family and follow us on Spotify, Amazon, Apple Podcasts. Anywhere where you listen to your podcast, we are there. And the more you follow, the more people are going to be referred to this podcast. There is so much poison being spewed on the internet today that I think you would be doing your friends and family a service by recommending this podcast to them. Now, our goal, my personal goal, is to help you to start and to maintain a relationship with God. I always say this. I want you to see what it looks like to walk with him on a day-to-day basis. There is a misconception that if you mess up sometimes in your journey with God, you're going to lose the relationship altogether. But that's not the case. That is not the case. This podcast exists to show you the ups and down of faith, a genuine walk of faith, and how you can navigate those ups and downs knowing that your faith is still intact, and he has you so tightly in his hands, and he is not letting you

Culture’s Version Of Freedom

SPEAKER_00 2:03

go. Today's topic, I want to talk to you about something that is so rampant, common in this modern, let me say postmodern era. The word freedom, that is one of the most common words in our vocabulary. It is preached in culture, packaged differently in advertising, and sometimes very subtly embedded in our entertainment. It is repeated so often that it almost feels sacred. We're told to be free. You know, remember that song, everybody's free. Remember that song? Used to play so much on the radio, on TV in the 90s, early 2000s. You're free, they say, you're free to choose for yourself. You can define your own truth. You're free to follow your desires without restraint. Freedom is presented as the highest good, the ultimate proof that you are alive. But when you look at it more closely, much of the things that we call freedom to it nowadays, if you really look at it with an analytical eye, with your full intellect, it is just influence that is dressed up as independence. It's like suggestions and suggestions that are masquerading as self-discovery. The world likes to let us think that we're choosing, if you've noticed, they'll let you think it's your choice. Yet our choices are constantly being shaped, being nudged, and being curated by forces that we may hardly

How Ads And Algorithms Shape Desire

SPEAKER_00 4:10

notice. You see it in ordinary things. I remember when I was a child, I never wanted to buy anything that was off-brand. If something was on TV, I don't care if it's good or it's not. That's the brand that I would choose. And my mom would always say to me, I remember I would say, I want chicken from this place. I don't want to say any, you know, particular uh food outlet, but I would say, I want food from this place. And she would say, uh, that's all fake. I'll go and make you the real deal at home. And I would feel like, uh, but I want to, I want that one because it's on TV. There can be an off-brand version of cereal, cornflakes, that is much better than a name brand. But because your children see that one on TV, they prefer that. They think it's their own preference, but they've been programmed. And of course, even as adults, we know that in this modern day of social media, the world of algorithms, that word, you're not even an IT person, but now you're talking of algorithms. Everyone knows, oh no, the YouTube algorithm is not going to let X, Y, and Z happen. So I need to record my content this way. I need to avoid this word. Why? Because everything is carefully curated to make you want and desire certain things, yet you think it's your own freedom. You are exercising your freedom of choice. I've been a victim of this. If you are a regular, you know of my fragrance addiction. And there is a section of TikTok that they call perfume talk. And they discuss all sorts of new fragrances, cheaper alternatives, this and this. So sometimes I will find my FYP is inundated with just things that I don't like. Okay, this fragrance, okay. It's gourmand season. All of a sudden, I found myself liking anything with vanilla in it. And I never really used to like it before. I'm looking for gourmand fragrances. Like who wants to smell like a cupcake? Well, I do now because I've been influenced. So you need to understand that what you often call personal preference may already be a desire that is formed for you by culture, by repetition on TV, on the radio, by invisible persuasion of the world around us.

What Does Freedom Really Mean

SPEAKER_00 7:05

So I would hope if you're someone who's serious about just growing spiritually and true growth and true freedom, you need to ask a deeper question. That if my appetites can be trained and my tastes can be programmed and my choices can be directed, then what exactly do we mean when we say that we're free? Is this freedom merely an ability to do what we want? Even when what we want is already engineered by the systems around us? Or is true freedom something deeper, something more spiritual, more discerning?

Mark 5 And The Man In Tombs

SPEAKER_00 7:56

I was studying, I was reading the book of Mark today, and I think I started at chapter two, then three, but when we got to chapter five, there's something, a story that is so popular and so common, but today it just something new that it jumped out of the scripture and came alive. And I was like, hmm, that's interesting. And this is the story of the demon-possessed man in Mark chapter 5. You can start from verse 1 if you want, up to around verse 20. So in this scripture, in this chapter, Jesus crosses over the lake and enters the region that is called the Garazines. And then when Jesus got out of the boat, immediately there's a man who had what they called an impure spirit that came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs, okay? That was his home. He had been possessed so badly that the spirits that possessed him. If you read the scripture, it says, The man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. So this was the predicament that this man was in, and it was as a result of a demonic possession. But what jumped out to me when I was reading was the fact that no one could subdue him. That's freedom, right? He would be chained and he would break the chains. The evil spirit would empower him to break what people would call bondage. But imagine after breaking free from the chains, that same spirit that enabled him to break one bondage led him into a more deeper and disturbing bondage. It led him to the tombs, a graveyard, essentially, that he was living there. And if you go down the verses, you see it says, night and day among the tombs and in the hills, he would cry out and cut himself with stones. Can you imagine cutting yourself? And I'm not talking about with a razor blade, something sharp that you don't sometimes, if you're using a razor blade, you can be cut so deeply, and you don't even realize that you've been cut because it's it's so sharp. But with something so blunt as a stone, you feel the edges and the corners of the stone lacerating your skin, and it is it's torture, just thinking about it. And he would cry out at night because these spirits that had seemingly delivered him from this bondage that allowed him to break chains and leg irons had led him to an even greater bondage. That is the man that we meet in chapter 5 of the book of Mark. He looked free on the outside because he wasn't bound by any chains that we could see. No chain could hold him, the scripture said. No system, no leader could bind him. And yet, beneath that appearance of liberation was a bondage that was so deep, far deeper than anyone could see. That is the deception of the false freedom that the world offers. Do whatever you want, they say. Follow every desire, reject any form of restriction, and define the truth for yourself. They don't say, oh, the truth anymore. It's your truth. You can live your truth. And at face value, when you first look at such a beautifully framed narrative, you think, oh, this is life. I can do whatever I want. Oh, yeah, this is this is the life right here. But the question you must always ask yourself is what does this freedom actually produce? I can guarantee you it doesn't produce peace or wholeness. But what you're definitely guaranteed of getting is confusion, emptiness, and a lot of times self-destruction. And it all mirrors that story of the man in the tombs who escaped, right? He he escaped the bondage. No one could bind him. That's what the scripture said. Those who tried to restrain him, they're saying people are trying to keep me from having fun, from enjoying myself. But he only fell into something that controlled him even more on a more sinister level. Do you think that those people that were trying to bind him and put chains on him and leg irons, they were trying to just stop him from uh achieving his full potential? No. These were his family, probably his friends, probably authorities that were trying to keep him from harming himself and others. But here comes this demon, this legion demons that is setting him free, appearing to set him free from the restrictions of society. But yet it takes him to the tombs, to the graveyard. So he's now free from chains, but he's bound because he cannot return back to his family. He's now free from leg irons, but he can never be. He's a menace to society now. He's now free from handcuffs, but he's bound because he's now cutting himself and he's crying throughout the night.

When Freedom Turns Into Bondage

SPEAKER_00 15:14

And when I think of this story, I was thinking, I've watched so many documentaries about the AIDS pandemic back in 19, I think 1979, 80, 1981, thereabouts, when it started. And it came off, you know, the heels of the advent, rather, of you know, you need to be free. If you're a homosexual, you know, you don't need to follow the norms and the values. This was the message that was being spread across. You can be free to express yourself. And this expression wasn't saying you're free to be monogamous and have a partner of the same sex. They were really pushing you to be free, go out. They would have what they call gay bars and bathhouses where men normally would go to meet and have these, you know, excursions. It was all over. They had musicians encouraging it, concerts, drugs encouraging this indiscriminate sexual behavior. And it really involved a lot of like people engaging in sexual acts without maybe selecting partners or considering any potential risks, compulsive urges on TV, you know, in songs and music, they were encouraged. And if you think of that, these people would actually leave their families and say, I want to be free. So finally, when the AIDS pandemic hit in New York, man, we lost a lot of friends, family members. These were people's nephews, sons, uncles. This would be your doctor, your librarian, someone that you would see, and they actually had a very useful and warm part in society and in your heart. But the same mechanisms, the same systems that were put in place to encourage them to be free, they were very slow to find a solution. It would be 15 years before an actual solution to this pandemic would come to where life is actually prolonged. So imagine you ran away from your family that would have nursed you to health because they were restricting you from living this promiscuous lifestyle. And I'm not saying it happens everyone who perished from that pandemic was living this type of lifestyle, but I'm saying it came from the encouragement of this free lifestyle. The freedom led people to a greater and devastating bondage. And people died, I'm telling you. People died painful deaths. Anytime, go on the internet and search some of those documents. I'm not trying to scare anyone, but I'm trying to let you know that the freedoms that are often afforded by the world, if I were you, I would never trust any kind of freedom that looks like that. Because you're being set free from one bondage only to be put in a cage. And you're the one who's going to meet your demise. I want you to know the difference, the deception of this false freedom. Like I told you, you're told, do whatever you want and reject restriction. And at first, it feels like you're being liberated, like you're finally in control, and I'm finally free. And this type of freedom mirrors that story of the man in the tomb so much, because he escaped, but he fell into something deeper and more darker. I'm thinking of I have a teenager, and whenever you tell her something, of course she knows I love her, but sometimes she can feel like, you know, you're trying to restrict me. If I say, hey, you you need to focus on your schoolwork, I'm taking the phone, to her, even when I was that age, I felt like my freedom has been taken away. But you have to look at that freedom. When it is being taken away, are the people who are doing it taking it away because they hate you? Are they doing it because they want to cause you pain? Or are they doing it because they want to help you? A husband can be told by his wife, can you be home every night for dinner so we can eat together with the children as a family? But he might feel like this is a restriction. I want to go out with the guys, go partying. I want to, you know, go and and and have this lifestyle outside of my marriage. You know, I don't want to be tied down. But sometimes that tying down is actually good for you. Because you get to raise healthy children, you get to be nourished and have people who love you that actually pour into you. But for some reason, people actually feel like, no, this is restrictive. You only live once, so that means you should be reckless. But I think that because you only live once, you need to be more careful because you only have one chance and one attempt at what you're supposed to be. There are some liberties that do not free you. You think you're being set free, but you're they they they are unbinding you from protection. Once you step outside of that covering, you don't become free. You become exposed. Never trust a freedom that's going to pull you away from what preserves you. Not every restriction is oppressed. I'm telling you. Some restrictions are there to protect you. Now, let me take you back to the book of Mark.

Protective Limits In Family Life

SPEAKER_00 22:09

If you go to the story of the woman with the issue of blood, this is Mark chapter 5, verse 25 to 26. As I was reading this story, something else jumped out to me. So this is a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years. I'm assuming it was the way of women, you know, she was having her cycle non-stop for 12 years. And in the scripture, it actually said she had suffered much under many doctors. Can you imagine? You're going to a doctor looking for relief. But the scripture is saying she had suffered

The Woman With The Issue Of Blood

SPEAKER_00 22:56

a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better, she grew worse. So you're going to these places where you think, okay, this is where my solution is going to come from. This is the freedom that the world is offering me. I'm going to be free from this disease, and it's making it worse. That's the main characteristic of any form of freedom that is offered by the world. She went there looking for healing, but all she found was more and more pain. She spent every penny that she had, but it only got worse. And I want you to understand from this part of the story, I know she has a happy ending because she touches the hem of his garment and the flow of blood stops immediately. But it just has goes to show that for 12 years she went somewhere where she was promised help. But not everything that promises help actually heals. The world has systems, it has solutions, it has experts and different things that claim that they're going to save you. But sometimes what is touted and what is marketed as what is supposed to fix you is the very thing that deepens the wound. And we see this even now.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali And Spiritual Bankruptcy

SPEAKER_00 24:36

I was watching, I love watching debates like some atheists, agnostics, and even different religions when they debate Christianity and they talk about similarities, differences. And some atheists, I don't want to name them by name here, have called Christianity, well, spirituality and Christianity in particular, they would say it's nonsense. You know, that's nonsensical. And one of those scholars that really was a critic of Christianity, and she's very educated, very articulate, very well spoken. Her name is Ayan Hercy Ali. So that's A Y A N Ayan Ali. She was well known in the atheist circles, and she was a fierce, fierce critic and arguing from intellect and being articulate. She had knowledge, she had status, she had reason. But you know, there was something else that she had that she didn't tell people. I recently watched, I think in 2024, but I watched the interview recently. But she did this announcement in 2024. She announced that she had converted to Christianity. And I am telling you, the world shook because she was such a fierce critic of religion, spirituality, and Christianity in particular. And she came to a stage where she wants a podium that she once used to criticize Christianity. She had become a Christian apologist, and I was shocked to see it. Everyone was shocked, and they wanted to hear her story. And you know what she said? She said that she had had depression, anxiety, and self-loathing for about 10 years, if I'm not mistaken, but a very long time. And she had even uh not attempted, but she had thought of even taking her life. And she had gone to therapists and tried to work through it. I'm sure she had been put on some medications until one insightful, I would like to think she was just full of the Holy Spirit. This lady said to her, I think what you're suffering from, because we've been trying to treat it with no success, I think what you are suffering from is what we call spiritual bankruptcy. And because we've tried everything else, I think you owe it to yourself to explore this and pray and seek what they call a higher power, but we call God. And she had been broken down by this illness so much that she was willing to try it. She said, Okay, I'll do it. And she prayed and she asked him into her heart and she warmed up to the idea of having a relationship with her maker. Warmed up to the idea that there is a maker, there is an unmoved mover, an uncreated creator. She warmed up to the idea that there is a first cause, the uncaused causer. Oof, Jesus. And the moment she did that, she said everything else went away. The chronic depression, the anxiety that she had tried everything to cure by declaring and embracing a relationship with the Lord. She said she found peace, she found healing. And everyone, I remember this other fierce British atheist and fierce critic of Christianity. I know you know him. The moment I said British, he was shocked. He wanted to really understand what you get from this. And she said, I'm not willing to let go of what I've received from it. Because he kept on saying, but it's nonsensical. And she says, intellectually, if you look at it, you think it's nonsensical. But I choose to embrace Jesus. And I choose to embrace the faith because of what it has done for me. So this is all pushing my points that I'm saying the solutions and the freedoms. Imagine the freedom of the education that she is she had attained. She had gone on world stages because of how articulate. They say here we need to educate our women so they can be free. But look at what this education, this freedom had done for this lady. She was still in bondage. So she was educated and set free from Africa. As they would want us to believe, she was set from a low background, set free from a low background to these world stages, but she was still bound. And this was a very scary type of bondage because it's a type of bondage that you only experience when you're alone at night. When you wake up in the morning and there's no one else, no one else to pep you up and to support you and to say there's no such thing as a God. She's the only one who knew that what I have, for me to set myself free, I need to embrace something higher than myself. That when she found the relief that she needed, she was willing to go back to the same world stages where she attacked spirituality. She was willing to come back and say, I was wrong. And the pattern, you know, it keeps repeating. People chase freedom, and all they find is exhaustion. They chase expression, right? The freedom of expression and they find emptiness. They chase after independence, and the best that they can find is isolation, like this man in Mark chapter 5, who was demon-possessed, until they encounter something in someone deeper. I really want you to understand.

Perez Hilton And A Wake Up Call

SPEAKER_00 31:13

You know, this morning, this was even before I was preparing for the podcast. I saw Perez Hilton. For those people who know who are familiar with pop culture, uh, I remember when I came up when I was still in high school, that's when he started really gaining popularity for, you know, he was a blogger and he would say just horrid things about celebrities and people, and he would just have the freedom of speech, right? He would exercise his whatever amendment right to speak as a as a member of the press and you know, tabloids. He could say whatever he wanted, and he denigrated and attacked people's characters and caused, you know, if you're if you're a commentator of pop culture, a lot of them, in order to gain traction and to get people to pay attention, they normally add a wow factor, which entails sensationalizing and all these salacious stories that they will be putting out there. But today I saw just this morning, the 25th of March, he said God revealed himself to him. And I was like, I need to wash this. And he explained his health struggles. He was in the hospital with sepsis for 21 days, and they couldn't get, he had a nasal gastric tube, they were draining the infection, they couldn't get a hold of it. I'm not sure how the clip or the video that I saw, he didn't really reveal if it was anything spectacular or it was just in the saving of his life that he understood that there is someone greater than myself who saved me from this. So he was saying, I grew up, I'm going to start going to church with my children, I'm going to start doing this and this. And you could tell that he really understood that the freedom, imagine the freedom of speech that he had been given, the money, the financial freedom that he had been given by the money he was making from the blogging and everything. But it was still not enough. It led him to an even greater bondage. But he realized that true freedom is only found in God. And he was crying when I saw the video, and I was like, is this Perez? Because I had followed him. He seemed very, you know, someone who's just not concerned, he's not shaken by anything, but he was shaken. He was shooketh, they as they would say, and I could just tell there was a warmth about him and awe that he couldn't explain. And I said, That's it. I I know that look anywhere. That man has met with his maker and his savior. So we're seeing this pattern more and more in our modern day lives. Brilliant minds, accomplished individuals, people who have explored every avenue the world offers, yet they still find themselves empty.

Wholeness As The Measure Of Freedom

SPEAKER_00 34:52

True freedom is not found in the absence of boundaries. I really want you to understand that. When Jesus encountered the man in Mark chapter 5, he didn't bind him. If you read in on verse 18, it says, And as Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. Jesus did not let him, but he said, Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you. So imagine this: the same person that had sent set him free from bondage would set him free from cutting himself and gave him back his family and gave him back his life. That same man said, No, you're free. He wanted to go with him, but Jesus said, No. Go and tell people what the Lord has done for you. The man who once lived among the tombs was later seen sitting. He was clothed and in his right mind. Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is what freedom looks like. Not chaos, not self-destruction, but wholeness. So the question is not simply, am I free? Is there freedom here? Am I free? The question is, where is this freedom taking me? Because some freedoms are invitations into tighter and deeper chains. Some restrictions, though, are coming from the very hands of love, holding you back from losing yourself. Not every open door leads to life. And not every restriction is your enemy. Some freedoms come to unravel you, like they did with this man in Mark chapter 5. But some boundaries are coming to preserve you, to preserve your life, to make sure that you attain your God-given destiny. True freedom is not found in doing everything you can, in going out

Prayer Share And Closing

SPEAKER_00 38:00

and then not having any what they call inhibitions. A true freedom is in becoming who you are created to be. It's not meant to scare you, it's meant to open your eyes to the freedom that can only be provided by our Creator, our God, the one who loved us before we even knew what love was. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we come to you today and we thank you. Thank you for such a lesson. Thank you for pointing out how this word freedom has been misused and abused to actually put us in greater slavery. We thank you, Lord, because you have let us know that true freedom comes from you. It may appear like it is bondage or restriction, but you only restrict us to protect us. In Jesus' name. If you found this episode helpful, enriching in any way, please share it with a friend, a family member, anyone who needs it. Now, this has been the Light of Life podcast, and as usual, stay in the light.