Let me not imprison Your Son with my own laws.
1. Your Son is free,
my Father.
²Let me not think I have imprisoned him with laws I made myself to govern bodies.
³He is not subject to any laws I have devised to protect the body.
⁴What changes has no effect on him.
⁵He is not bound by the laws of time.
⁶He is exactly as You created him,
for he knows no law but the Law of Love.
2. Let us not worship idols, nor believe in any law that idolatry has made to hide the Son of God’s inherent freedom.
²Only his own beliefs can bind him.I
³But what he is lies far beyond his faith in bondage or in freedom.
⁴He is free because he is his Father’s Son.
⁵And nothing can imprison it, unless God’s Truth can be false, and God Himself has willed to deceive Himself.
I Become aware of this great truth: you are a prisoner only of your own beliefs. The world is real to you because you believe in it, and you see it according to the way you believe. Your brother also believes in the world, but in his own way. And yet both worlds are whimsical, fantastic, unreal—they are nothing but illusion.
What is the world? A belief.
What is fear? A belief.
Your thoughts, when you give them credence, take on the appearance of reality and end up frightening you, though they are only fictions. The same is true of your brothers: they too are frightened by the stories they tell themselves. Why place your faith in what robs you of peace? Why consent to let your beliefs be a prison?
Jesus reminds you that all the laws you have invented—the laws of the body, of time, of sickness, of effort, of sacrifice—are merely decrees you have proclaimed within a dream, and they do not bind your true Self in any way. Only your own beliefs chain you, and you can free yourself from them the moment you decide not to obey them anymore.
As long as you believe yourself to be in this world, there is only one Law worth obeying: the Law of Love. Love yourself, love your brothers, love Creation. And when you leave the dream behind, you will discover there was nothing else to obey, for Love and Happiness are what you have always been.
The lesson proclaims: “Let not my laws imprison Your Son.” This is the plea of the heart that has begun to awaken: “Father, do not let me bind myself with beliefs of separation, limitation, and fear.”
The ego dictates relentless laws: that time passes and destroys, that the body sickens and dies, that life must defend itself through competition and attack. But the Son of God is not subject to those illusory laws. He is as God created him—free, eternal, and untouched.
To understand this, consider an old joke by Chico Marx. In Duck Soup, disguised as Groucho, he tries to convince someone to believe him despite all evidence to the contrary, and delivers the famous line: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” The humor lies in the absurdity of the proposal—how could one trust an impostor more than one’s own sight?
And yet, that is precisely what Jesus asks us to do: to trust His Word more than what our eyes testify. For our senses show us a world of death, sickness, and separation, while His Word reminds us that none of it is real. What is comic in the mouth of Chico Marx becomes, in the mouth of Jesus Christ, the most serious and liberating truth.
Father, let me not imprison Your Son today with my own laws.
Let me not impose chains that You never decreed.
Teach me to remember that he is free, for he is as You created him.
Amen.