It amazes me when I think of all the times I have heard the word ‘freedom’. It is always attached to a specific action. Freedom of speech is the most common. And then there is the freedom to extinguish an unborn life – as in abortion. There is the freedom to protest, the freedom to choose/change one’s sexuality, the freedom to carry arms, the freedom to fight or to refuse to fight.
I am not here interested in exploring the morality or immorality of the various actions – permissible or not – by the mighty gift of freedom. I am interested in what I have never heard regarding ‘freedom’. What precisely is it?
After much thought and research and reflection, I have come to the conclusion that freedom is a divine gift, innate and inviolable; a divine spark eternally alight in the soul of every human person. It is the ability to choose one option among others. It is not the choice itself, as in free speech or free sexuality or free anything else. All those things are just options; options we are able to choose (if socially/politically permitted) because we have that divine ability – faculty – facility – call it what you will, to make a choice at all. More than that, freedom has a very specific purpose. It is freedom that gives us the gift of love.
Love is the one endowment we can give to one another that must be free in order to be love. We do not give loyalty, respect, admiration, fidelity or any other such endowment. All these things are, to a greater or lesser extent commanded or demanded from us. Love alone must be free … and it is dependent upon nothing but the freedom within us. It is not to the worthy, the loyal, the faithful, the respectable that we give love. We give love because we choose to give love. And love is not the same as liking. We like because in many ways we cannot help but like.
I have often reflected and been grateful (as a Christian) that Jesus did not say we had to like our neighbour. That is a whole ‘other’. He said we must love our neighbour … and that is a choice we are always capable of making.
Choosing to not-love is what opens the door to evil in our world.