The Price of Freedom

I originally shared this on July 1, 2020. The words still ring true today, three years later, as I contemplate the land I live on. The original post can be found here.

I’ve been struck with a thought lately. It pops into my head often. “What was here, before I was here?” I thought about it on our drive to Whistler last week. I’ve thought about it during worship at our church building. I’ve thought about it in my classes at UBC. What history does the land where I stand hold? If I could rewind time, what would I see? A whole lot, probably. I’d see a lot of beautiful things, and a lot of painful ones. I’d see people, beautiful God-created people, gathering in love and community. I’d also see ignorance. I’d see assaults. I’d see God-created people attacking other God-created people - sometimes in the name of God Himself.

As I contemplated Canada Day this morning, these words ran across my mind: “My freedom was bought with a price.” I cannot celebrate Canada Day without acknowledging that. I live freely in this country, because an entire people group had their land, their culture, and their existence stolen from them. I love this place I get to call home, but I cannot love it and celebrate it without acknowledging the pain it was built on and working to reconcile it.

As I sat there, with my coffee in hand, the words ran across my mind again. “My freedom was bought with a price.” If you’re a Christian, or familiar with Christianity at all, this idea is not foreign. It’s the gospel. My freedom was bought with a price. I sat there this morning, and compared the two phrases. They are the same, but they hold different stories, different connotations. I held them in each hand. On one hand, the price of Indigenous history and lives. People ravaged and plundered in the creation of the land I live on now. On the other, the cross. The place where Jesus paid it all, where he was ravaged and humiliated in order to atone. I was struck with the irony of it, how a simple phrase can hold both the freeing power of Christ and also the atrocity of genocide and colonization.

I held these phrases in both hands, two stories of disempowerment, trauma, and oppression with two very, very different endings. And, as I sat there, I thought about how the cost of the cross was a price willingly paid.

Jesus chose it, out of love. Out of a desire to empower humankind with life, true life. The cost of Canada, though, was a price unwillingly paid. It was a theft. A robbery that must be repaid. A gaping wound that needs to be healed. There is nothing I owe to Christ, but everything I owe to the people who resided on this land before my ancestors got here.

I live and breathe, create and connect, exist and explore on the unceded traditional territories of the Matsqui, Kwantlen, Katzie, and Semiahmoo First Nations. Thank you.