The term “freedom” is thrown about without a care these days. The world is abuzz with trending topics such as 1) “The freedom to love” – I should be free to love whoever, and however I want, and marry whomever I wish, be it with regard to homosexual, promiscuous flings – heterosexual or otherwise, polygamous sexual relations, with a non-living thing like a hologram or a pillow, or even to the extent of having beastial relations; 2) “The freedom of choice” – I should be free to choose whether this person whom I bear in my womb should live or die; I should be free to be able to tap on technologies such as gene selection, or in-vitro technologies to have a child if I am barren; I should be allowed the legal choice of assisted euthanasia if I want to die; and 3) “The freedom of ideology” – I should be free to pick and choose the parts of religion or spiritualism that I want to embrace, and the choice to erase out the things that do not benefit or serve me.
While the notion of freedom has to do with a state of free will, that is emancipated from slavery, or despotic control, even to the point of being in possession of particular rights and privileges, the Christian definition of what freedom is, is closer to the Old English word, freo, meaning to be not in bondage and slavery of, which in turn draws its origin from the Proto-Germanic friaz, meaning “beloved”. (Online Etymology Dictionary, n.d.).
Freedom as beloved. This is a rather beautiful thought. I am free because I am loved dearly, and deeply by God my Father, and I am set free because of Christ’s loving sacrifice on the cross for me. I am no longer a slave, under the regimentation and authority of sin. I was once no people, but now I am God’s own, and because I am a child of God and heir to the Kingdom of God, I am and have truly been ransomed from a debt that I could not pay, and thus am truly free. In the past, men and women were sold into slavery and prostitution for a sum of money and were considered property of the land and plantation, or brothel owners who had purchased them. They could only attain their freedom and had their chains metaphoric or physical cut off, if they managed to pay off their debt and the accrued interest through their wages, or if they were redeemed by a patron who paid off or ransomed their debt. For Christians, our debt has been paid in full by Grace, and our dignity has been restored in Christ.
As Isaiah 9 says, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined,” (9:2) and “For the yoke of his burden and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Mid’ian.” (9:4)
This is reinforced in Luke 4:18-19 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” Jesus repeats the exact same words from Isaiah 61 and reinforces this Scriptural text, to let the people know that He is the fulfilment of this prophecy, and that His reign’s mission has to do with a true commitment to liberation. The Jews of that time thought that He would be a Messiah King who would liberate them from the human oppression of the Romans, but Jesus offered something more. He would offer his people true freedom from sin and death.
The Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, is thus a herald of freedom, and a key for true emancipation. We who were once held captive by the chains and fetters of sin, are now offered an opportunity to break free from sin’s talons and cages, and to live the true freedom that is our birth-right as children of God, via the gift of Grace.
What the world offers in its multifarious and glamourised definitions of freedom is actually still slavery, albeit cleverly disguised. The Church in living the Gospel of Jesus calls for the freeing of persons from the tyrannical grip of cultural, economic, social, and political serfdom, that is derived from sin and from the perpetuation of sin (Ratzinger, 1984). Anything that takes a human person away from his or her dignity is not freedom, but subjugation that is marketed as freedom. Yet, this is something difficult to discern, as the world says, without this product you are not free, if you cannot live your life in this manner, you are not free… when in actuality, the buying and internalisation of these worldly ideas take us further away from latitude and manumission.
The Christian’s call to liberation, has to do with 1) tearing down the veils of confusion which mar us from recognising ourselves as how God our Father sees us; 2) destroying the idols in our life that obstruct us from recognising the dignity of who we are as sons and daughters of God; 3) obliterating the false judgements and prejudices that we have, which prevent us from seeing God in our neighbour, a fellow human being. This entails a commitment to justice and a love for the brother or sister who is disinherited, persecuted, rejected by society, or oppressed. It is also a call to action to respond with a spirit of truth and authenticity with evangelism and zeal for the poor. If we are living our lives with no preferential option for the poor and the disenfranchised, we are in fact living Christianity the wrong way.
Yet, this cannot and should not be confused with Marxism that purports to speak the language of freedom, but in reality, departs from the faith of the Church and in fact negates it completely.
For the Marxist, truth consists only in the class struggle between the Proletariat, the working class, and the Bourgeoisie, the upper echelons of society. At the core of Marxism is an atheistic outlook that negates the presence of God and supposes that society is better off without God. While in the midst of affecting the propaganda of its policies, Marxism also erroneously denies the dignity and free will of a person by subjugating this person to the collective, and by simultaneously erasing and ignoring the principles of the many facets of the political and the social that make up a person’s identity.
The danger, for the Christian, is that we tend to prefer these false freedoms offered by worldly mythologies, rather the true freedom that is offered by the Gospel of Christ. These are the Golden Cows in our lives. Like the straying Israelites, the scary part is this: we willingly seek out and enslave ourselves to these Golden Cows. We sell ourselves out for a pittance to false gods and idols; we willingly tie ourselves up with sin.
St. Paul thus exhorts us, “For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)
We are also reminded by Jesus that our freedom does not come from the world, but from the Son of God Himself: “Amen, amen, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. A slave does not remain in a household forever, but a son always remains. So if a son frees you, then you will truly be free” (John 8: 34-36).
The freedom that we have was built on the blood of martyrs. It is not a cheap freedom, but one that which has been bought for a great price. Let us truly live as how this freedom entails us to live.
By the Grace of God,
Brian Bartholomew Tan
References
Online Etymology Dictionary. (n.d.). Freedom. Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved July 23, 2022 from https://www.etymonline.com/word/freedom
Ratzinger, Cardinal, J. (1984). Instruction on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation”. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Vatican Publishing House.