Faith Venture

I have a paper laying dormant that would have been a Master’s thesis on freedom. I think of it at times. It’s why I like the Letter to the Galatians above all of Paul’s writing. It’s about freedom.

Some people (many?) think freedom means to be without restraint. That may be a definition, but it’s not an attitude that will take you very far in life.

Ryan Holliday has carved a career as the premier writer on Stoicism today. These thoughts came from his newsletter, The Daily Stoic.

In Rome at the time, many people believed that only free people were capable of being educated. But the indisputable truth that Epictetus saw every day in the moral disorder and dysfunction of Nero’s court, where his master served as a high-profile secretary, was that it was in fact the opposite. Only the educated, he said, were free. 

This is something Seneca points out about that same period in Rome—how profoundly unfree many of the richest and most powerful people are. This is true twenty odd centuries later too: Most people are enslaved and controlled and directed by their ignorance. Their impulses. Their temper. Their desires and delusions.

People think they are free when in reality they are slaves to something not of their choosing—power, money, stuff, alcohol, sex, all of the above.

Epictetus’s definition of education would be different from ours. The point remains. Being educated in philosophy, theology, literature, psychology can inculcate an understanding and sympathy to live a life of freedom within our constraints. Like what Paul was trying to express.

We were members of a congregation affiliated with the American Baptist Churches, USA, for about a dozen years. One of the classes I taught focused on Roger Williams, the 17^th Century Baptist preacher who was so upset with the Puritans in Massachusetts combining their church and the government, that he founded a new colony (now state) Rhode Island. He wanted a place for religious liberty.

The founders of the USA were likewise suspicious of state-sanctioned churches. The English government levied taxes on everyone to support the Church of England. The founders didn’t like their tax dollars going there. Religious liberty with no state-sanctioned church was baked into the Constitution.

But back to religious liberty and Roger Williams. That man had a lot of courage. And he determined a direction.

I studied the political concept of liberty (freedom) in graduate school. As my focus turned increasingly spiritual, I appreciated Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. It’s all about how we, you and I, can be free. 

When we live in the spirit, we are free. Not of all constraints, of course. That’s nonsense. But free to live with the fruit of the spirit: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Let us not take our eye off the goal. Don’t go down rabbit holes. Follow Jesus, live in the Spirit, enjoy the fruit.

Freedom, liberty. Concepts I was studying in graduate school when the faculty closed the program. I continue to ponder the paradoxes of meanings.

Some people think freedom is means to live without constraint.

I pondered the paradox of people who live in wild-fire-prone locations. Many grasp the freedom to landscape as they wish. Yet, when the inevitable wildfire occurs, that landscaping feeds the fire destroying their home and belongings and memories.

Freedom and consequence.

Paul, the apostle, wrote in his letter to the Jesus-followers in the Galatia region about freedom. It’s a short read. This time of year, freedom is on the minds of people in the US. Bev and I attended the Royal Nova Scotia Tattoo last week while vacationing out there. It was a celebration of freedom. A universal yearning.

Back to Paul. He explained that trying to follow all the laws promulgated both in the Torah and by generations of rabbis led to the opposite of freedom. Being so focused on not breaking any law bound you to the law.

In the paradox of freedom, he urged his readers to live in the Spirit since Jesus had died and been resurrected to fulfill the law. Now living in the Spirit paradoxically meant that you followed the important laws simply as a part of life. 

They (we) are free, yet we know where the constraints are, and that doesn’t bother us. We know that living outside the Spirit is deadening. But living in the Spirit brings true life. The fruit of living that way, 

Love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

And, wow, don’t we need more kindness and self-control in this age?

A significant belief in America, and probably in much of the world, holds that freedom means “I can do what I want, when I want, and to whom I want.” When you ponder this on its own merits, it sounds adolescent.

I once pondered the question of freedom from this dichotomy, “freedom from…” versus “freedom to…”

Then I discovered Paul’s letter to the Galatians which discusses the idea of freedom from the point of view of the Spirit. I wrote my first book on that topic (mired amongst some old files on a backup hard drive somewhere).

Two recent thoughts from the Plough Daily Dig:

What if freedom is the opportunity to do what’s right?

From philosopher King-Ho Leung.

For Sartre, as for Augustine, freedom is not about the kinds of options we have and make in life or even our very ability to choose what options to take. We do not become free because of the sheer number of alternatives we are given or because of the choices we make in life. Rather, freedom pertains to how one pursues meaning in life: it is not about what we are or what choices we make but how we make them and how we live our lives.

From David Foster-Wallace.

There are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of wanting and achieving. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people, and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom.

Meditate on these important thoughts.

Every year I suggest that all Americans take some time to read a few things to refresh our memories about the founding of our country. It’s probably not a bad practice for all of you who do not live here just for the ideals.

Read 

• The Declaration of Independence
• The Preamble to the Constitution
• Actually the entire Constitution
• If not all, at least the first 10 amendments—the Bill of Rights
• Bonus points—read The Federalist Papers

These documents are full of compromises—something that has made it last so long. And something we seem unwilling to do this past decade or so.