“For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.” Gal 5:13

“Only take care lest this liberty of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.” 1 Cor 8:9

“Live as free men, yet without using your freedom as a pretext for evil; but live as servants of God.” 1 Pet 2:16

“For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more.” 1 Cor 9:19

What I propose to do in this series of articles on larger freedom is (i) to raise some questions hoping that they will help us to reflect upon our responsibilities as members of a larger community in the diaspora and (ii) to venture to make some observations without making any claim that they are tested principles. Some of those statements have to be cryptic because of the lack of space.

‘Freedom’ is probably one of the most significant aspects of life warranting constant study and reflection. The ancient sages proclaimed sa vidya ya vimuktaye (That is true knowledge which makes us free). Nature endows man with responsible power of choice thus making freedom both possible and real. Freedom is the prerequisite for learning on the part of responsible selves. God teaches by indirection. He not only permits but enforces the freedom to learn. “Dare to be free” was a slogan of the American Revolution. Ezra Pound defined a slave as someone who waits for someone else to free him. Deitrich Bonhoeffer distinguished a slave from a free man by stating that the former asks, what is to come? While the latter asks, what is right?

“I’ve gott a be free; I’ve gott a be me.” This couplet from an old popular song expresses the sentiment of many people. In addition to the freedoms guaranteed by constitutions of democratic countries, we can list a number of freedoms we cherish and to a certain extent enjoy: freedom to maintain or even better the standard of living to which we are accustomed; freedom from responsibility; freedom to live private lives without outside interference; freedom to make our daily work meaningful; freedom to do what we want to do without feeling guilty; freedom to grow to the full stature of our capabilities; freedom to enjoy what our culture and society offer. In spite of these kinds of freedoms we enjoy we have an uneasy feeling of being trapped. Many times this may be resulting from what Alvin Toffler characterized as ‘overchoice’. In the American culture, for instance, we have too many options. Our possessions, affiliations, and activities possess us and enslave us. Erich Fromm in his seminal book Escape from Freedom characterized the prevailing attitude of the German people which gave a free hand to Adolf Hitler. People were tired of having to make choices. They were happy to leave the decision to the eventual dictator. Freedom is too heavy a burden to bear!

You will agree that being free is not a matter of freedom to do or be whatever we wish. It is not freedom from all responsibility. It is not license and it is not to be taken as synonymous with being adventuresome or fearless. To be free is to know our limits and to operate resourcefully with them. Paul said, “I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content.” (Phil 4:11) That is freedom. Increased knowledge of oneself and others along with the knowledge of the world broaden the bases of freedom. The will to power is possession and is not the will to freedom. Plato rightly pointed out that a tyrant is himself a slave.

How free are we? Psychologist B. F. Skinner advocated that we give up our ‘illusion of freedom’ and get busy learning how to control our life by eliciting the conditioned reflexes which best fit our needs. It is true that man is not totally autonomous No absolute freedom exists in this life. We are, like it or not, servants of our own culture and technology. Coincident with the force from without is the disturbing fact that we are also controlled by forces from within which we cannot adequately manage. All we can talk about is relative freedom. It is possible, however, to increase our margin of autonomy. The Christian claim is that we are growing into freedom and will one day be perfectly be free in Christ.

There are some important questions to be answered: (i) Given the fact of order as the correlate of freedom, how are they to be prioritized in different situations? What are some of the situations when it is justifiable to risk the loss of order for the sake of freedom? The loss of freedom for the sake of order? Under what conditions would it be appropriate to subordinate one concern to the other? (ii) Can we legitimately speak of a ‘Christian freedom’ as distinctive from freedom in general? What is the relationship between Christian faith and freedom? Is a Christian more ‘free’ than others? What are the differences which faith in our Lord Jesus Christ can, ought to, and sometimes does make in our moral decisions? (iii) What role does discipline play vis-à-vis freedom? (iv) Is Christian freedom authentic both in the world and in the church?

Jesus said, “You will know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” Again, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” (Jn 8:36) St. Paul added, “For freedom Christ has set us free.” T. R. Glover’s famous sentence comes to mind: “Four words destroyed slavery, ‘For whom Christ died’”(Rom 14:15) Thus Christ brings the larger personal and Christian freedom. This realization has two consequences for the Christian. He becomes impatient with restrictive rules designed for the immature and he begins to think of others.

At the center of the Christian faith is the experience of liberation, the reality of freedom, the basis and promise of human rights. “Freedom is the gift of Christianity”, declared Nicholas Berdyaev. Freedom sprang forth from the Christian Evangel that in Christ we have been set free from sin and death in order to live out our days in obedience and service, and to follow the quest for truth and wholeness.

The plight of freedom has been bleak in this country, contrary to claims for national pride, and its prospect now is not for our comfort. It has become our spiritual disease. Someone observed that “the only universal thing about human rights is their universal denial.” The revolution typical of the last century is totalitarian. It claims human freedom and identity, and demands blind obedience and laborious service for anonymous and malignant powers. Sometimes we have to question whether the so called paragon of democracy, the United States itself, is really democratic.

Christian freedom is not an abstraction. It is a gift of grace. It comes with the acknowledgment of God’s claim over us. It is a pre-requisite for responsibility and maturity. Freedom depends on our living in the Word, on a living relationship with God.

Christian freedom has three facets. I follow here essentially Bill Junker’s analysis.

1. Breaking free – Believing and trusting in and feeling of new freedom God has given us in Jesus. As Karl Barth claimed “faith is freedom” and only by faith in Christ does man achieve his right and proper freedom to trust, to know, and to confess. We don’t have to prove our worth. We can drop our defenses. To the degree that we count on His word of promise, we can ‘sit loose’ to everything else.

2. Living free – the continual process of becoming free persons which also involves dying to be free. Men of faith are incurable protesters. “They protest anything finite – nation, culture, mankind – that claims to be infinite other than God’s basic law of love; anything relative – mores, moral codes, ethical standards – that claims to be absolute; anything human – the self, the church (structures), the in-group – that claims to be divine.” The tragedy is that we have lost the will to protest. There is grave danger of idolatry when we look for governance to anything except Christ, be it laws or principles or pre-fabricated rules of conduct.

3. Setting others free – We “cannot separate the idea of deliverance from the idea of God, or even think of of man as blessed except as he enters into God’s redeeming purpose and labors to make others free.” (F. D. Maurice) We have lost our sensitivity to evil and are abysmally indifferent to it. We witness continually acts of injustice, manifestations of hypocrisy, falsehood, outrage, misery, but we rarely grow indignant or overly excited.” The niggardliness of our moral comprehension, the incapacity to sense the depth of misery caused by our own failures, is a fact which no subterfuge can elude. Our eyes are witness to the callousness and cruelty of man, but our heart tries to obliterate the memories, to calm the nerves, and to silence the conscience.” (Abraham Heschel)

We are called to be apostles of freedom in the power of the Risen Christ. We should not be intimidated by any would-be Caesar. We have to take up the cause of the exploited, the oppressed, the alienated, and the despairing, but go in the power of Him who has conquered both sin and death and has the oppressed, the alienated, and the despairing, but go in the power of Him who has conquered both sin and death and has set us free.

Basically, it is a matter of choosing one’s master. It is expressed well in the hymn ‘Make me a captive Lord/ And then I shall be free’ It is the authority emanating from going directly to the Source, God, the ground of freedom. It is abundant life which is potentially dying for Christ. Someone asked the late activist community organizer, Saul Alinsky, in an interview, if he were not afraid of being killed. His solemn reply was “I died a long time ago. I don’t have to face that anymore. Now I am free to do my work.”

Christian freedom is responsible freedom. It is not freedom from others and their demands. It is freedom to serve others in love. Our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others. It is freedom from legalism. Emil Brunner noted: “ There is a great deal written in the Old Testament as divine law which no Christian can regard as binding upon himself unless he ceases to be a Christian.” Paul Ramsey in his Basic Christian Ethics argues that everything is lawful, everything is permitted which Christian love permits, everything is demanded which Christian love requires. It reminds us of the Augustinian dictum, “Love with care and then what you will, do.” He further states, “The commands of love are as stringent as the needs of the world are urgent.”

The one test according to Schubert Ogden (Faith and Freedom) whether love is really present is always freedom – both in the sense that the test of whether one loves another is always whether one intends to speak and act in such a way as somehow to optimize the limits of the others’ freedom, and in the sense that the test of whether one is loved by another is always whether the limits of one’s own freedom are in some respect thus optimized by what the other says or does. This notion resembles that of Erik Erikson’s paraphrase of the Golden Rule: “Whenever one has a choice, one should choose to act, so as to enhance the potentials of one’s counter-player’s development as one’s own.”

Christian freedom means taking our lives seriously and it is a call to courage to lay our emphasis where Christ laid it. It makes moral choices most responsibly with, to use the brilliant characterization of George Chauncey, “the commitment of faith, in light of the facts, with the help of the fellowship, and aware of his own fallibility.” (Decisions! Decisions!)

H. Richard Niebuhr suggested that the question, what must I do in a given situation must be preceded by the question, what is God doing? Gustafson reformulated it by stating that the primary question is “What is God enabling and requiring me (or us) to be and to do?” (Can Ethics Be Christian?) It is impossible for us to imitate Christ. That is why many prefer to speak about Christian discipleship or following Christ rather than imitating Christ. Martin Luther, in his treatise The Freedom of a Christian, summarizes all that it means to be a Christian in the two paradoxical statements: “A Christian man is The most free Lord of all and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all and subject to everyone.” Before freedom can become a way of life it must be deeply entrenched as a way of thought.

God has given us three faculties: thinking, feeling, and willing. God made us with a mind, that we might think freely. He made us with a heart that we might love freely. He made us with a will that we might obey freely. To obey his strongest appetites for drink, sex, power, revenge, or whatever, leaves him the freedom of an animal to take what he wants when he wants it but not the freedom of a man to be human. The old prayer speaks of God ‘in whose service is perfect freedom’. The paradox is not as opaque as it sounds. The only freedom love denies is the freedom to destroy ourselves.