Freedom

It is not likely that there is sound general understanding of freedom as God has it in his nature and projects it to mankind as a human right.  Although many nations consciously try to make room for true freedom, many nations make freedom a crime, sometimes punishable by death.  Freedom, like love, is in God’s nature.  His image in us makes us beneficiaries of that freedom as he defines it to us as a personal experience held by the person as part of self.  For example, the Apostle Paul was a prisoner of Rome, on his way to Rome seeking exoneration for accusations against him.  On the way the ship floundered.  The only person on board truly free appears to have been Paul, who in the awareness of his freedom took over events guiding the other prisoners and ship’s crew to procedures in which no lives were lost – Acts 27:9-44.  A similar drama occurred earlier with the Philippian jailer – Acts 16:25-36.  Paul, a prisoner, was free.

From the meaning of freedom, I am free in my person to do whatever I wish to do if I am not in relationship with any other person’s self or property.  On entrance into the space shared with another person my freedom permits me to function with limitations on my conduct, even my thought processes for the equal or better situation provided to my present neighbor.  That is necessary for the virtue of freedom.  It explains why God does not judge mankind with immediate punishment for any violation of righteousness – a righteousness that offers the same virtues to all in equal forms.  When those virtues are violated the original virtue is lost, in entirety or in part, and we fumble with the tangled webs we work on.  When we violate the laws that are meant to offer consideration of the rights of all, the law and courts punish us.  If the punishment is fulfilled the person is presumed to be restored, and understanding to better performance is presumed even though recividism is a common follow-up pattern against human freedom.  In simplicity, human freedom is eternal.  No matter how the person feels inside, the keeping of law is the secret in secular contexts.  One is presumed free if not breaking the law.  But that person may not be free at all.  Taken with habits and addictions, with greed or passion, or whatever, the person is not free even in the keeping of laws – kept so as to avoid jail or some other penalty.  The person free in God remains in guided liberty felt strongly when that person is surrounded by persons held by enslavement to something related to self. 

Loss of the understanding of freedom, order, responsibility, progress, discipline may lead persons to choose distractions that add to problems.  I heard a lady say she liked getting drunk and was free to get drunk.  Her decision was made not out of a right to drink excessively, but because she had given over her freedom for a choice that betrayed her as a free person.  Freedom was lost.  Freedom begins for us within us, and is at its best in making the right choices balanced to the context in which we find ourselves.  Sometimes the context is anything but free.  Under God, I refuse to give up my freedom from evil.  More persons lose their freedoms in themselves than there are those presuming it to be taken from them.  As God’s child, and knowing thought and conduct related to that freedom emanating from God, neither will I or anyone else take immortal freedom from me.  Freedom is to make right choices for myself, and to make them hold even if someone is presumed to be taking it from me.  The Apostle Paul taught the concept for both Christians and non-Christians using even his Roman citizenship in analogy.  Knowing that governments were appalling in performance the Apostle was proud of the meaning of government to freedom – often the very freedom the government did not honor in their administrations.  His defense of government in Romans 13 was in defense of what government ought to be.  Even if functioning in objectionable ways, the government available gained more than no government.  It implied order and the guarantee of right as they interpreted it.  The point related to the integrity of righteousness which included freedom (choice).  God wants us to use our freedom for various purposes, the first of which is recognition that we have been set free of our own human-imposed bonds.  The magnitude of that truth registered with me when a pollster seeking my views ran through a long list of common human habits that are perceived as destructive to the citizenry.  My answer was that my free choice was to evade all of them.  The pollster appeared surprised.