The Room and Freedom

I just finished the book The Room. Without spoiling too much, it’s about a woman who is captured and kept locked up in an 11 foot by 11 foot room with her five-year-old son who is born into captivity.

It is a good book. The most interesting part is that it’s written from the perspective of the five-year-old.  

At the end of the book there was a “Reading Group Guide” with questions to consider. One of them was, “Why do people tend to be so fascinated by stories of long-term confinement?” 

I pondered this a bit. The obvious answer is that our freedom is so precious to us, we can’t imagine something so terrible, so we’re drawn to it. Like watching a train crash or the modern true crime craze. 

There is a longer answer, though.  

Our freedom, our agency, is the most important thing in the world to each of us. Our ability to choose and make our own choices is more important to us than anything. It’s more important to God than anything, also. That’s why we’re here. 

I think this fascination with confinement and the inability to choose is a fascination with something we know to be inherently wrong.  

Every one of us here on earth chose to come here, to Earth. There were some who didn’t choose this. There was one that tried to take away our freedom, to force us to choose his way. He phrased it as a way to save us all, but really, what he was proposing was enslavement. Satan proposed the plan that would have us all return to heaven. The catch was that we would have no say in the matter. We would be compelled to follow him, to do it his way. We would be his puppets. In return, he would ensure we got back safely. 

God always wants us to choose. 

We even chose to be able to choose. We are here because we chose agency and freedom.  

I think that’s why these stories are so fascinating to us. We already chose freedom. Being here on Earth was a choice. God will always give us a choice. Not being given a choice feels wrong because it is wrong.  

We already chose to reject Satan and come here and use our agency. 

Don’t forget that. You’ve already chosen.