Free or Freed?

We live in the greatest country in the world, free to express our rights, religion and reasonable opinions, which include love, sometimes hatred, and often contempt. We even fought against ourselves over freedom to have slavery. But yet, many of us are still slaves. Slaves to money, prejudice and addiction to so many other things.
Additionally, God gave us free will, so in America, we should be totally and unconditionally free. And yet, just one look around our community will show us that our freedom and free will has led us into the edge of darkness, a place where we have blocked the sunlight of God's Spirit and replaced it with the images of gods similar to what our Hebrew brethren did wandering in the desert.
God has given us the promised land, yet we remain unfulfilled in our promises. We only have to look at two of the most quoted scriptures to see that God knew, despite all he did for us, we would still be discontent.
Pick one: Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. John 8:32 
          So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. John 8:36
The first one offers a qualifier most people do not quote: If you hold to my teachings. Simply, we will be free if we are in covenant with Him. In the next one it adds a disclaimer afterward: I know you are Abraham's descendants. Yet you are ready to kill me.
Bottom line, we have been truly blessed, but we continue to throw those blessings away by exercising what we have defined as freedom, we kill the messenger of faith, and we turn our back on the real God for all the fake gods of what we call pleasure. Then, the pleasure requires more pleasure, because the pleasure becomes less.
But to be truly freed, to walk away from the internal incarceration of slavery, to bask in the glow of perpetual freedom, we must walk and stay in the Son-light!