This past Fourth of July my wife, daughter, and I gathered with many others at a downtown park to watch fireworks. It was a largely enjoyable evening, but for the cloying and pervasive odor of marijuana that surrounded us. Ohio is one of many states to decriminalize marijuana for recreational use and it seemed like everyone around us was indulging in that freedom.
Which raises the question, what is the purpose of freedom? Were the founding fathers risking their lives and liberty just so some aging hippie could get stoned while watching fireworks? Or did they, perhaps, have a grander purpose in mind?
Ask people today, “What is freedom?” and probably 95% will answer along the lines of “Being able to do what I want.” We should be free to do anything we choose so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. The purpose of freedom, then, is to fulfill our personal desires unhindered. But is this really freedom? Does God have a different idea about the nature and purpose of freedom?
The classicist Walter Agard points out the ancient Greeks were the first people to try to define freedom in a particular way. He cites Plato declaring, “The city is full of freedom and frankness – anyone may do as he wishes.” At first blush this declaration would seem to agree with our modern conception of freedom, yet the Greeks also realized the danger of man living only by his own unfettered choices. Thus, they conceived of freedom as serving a higher purpose – truth. Agard observes, “The Greeks first enunciated the faith that only those who have come to know the truth are really free.” Therefore, the key to freedom is to first answer the question, “What is truth?”
In Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus he has Socrates debating the young man after whom the dialogue is named over what constitutes truth. Starting with Parmenides' declaration that, “Man is the measure of all things,” the two question whether perception is adequate to define truth, or whether our perception is merely the apprehension of a truth that exists external to us. Time and again, Socrates challenges the view that perception is everything, arguing for an objective, eternal truth as necessary for true knowledge.
He declares:
There are two patterns eternally set before them; the one blessed and divine, the other godless and wretched: but they do not see them, or perceive that in their utter folly and infatuation they are growing like the one and unlike the other, by reason of their evil deeds; and the penalty is, that they lead a life answering to the pattern which they are growing like. And if we tell them, that unless they depart from their cunning, the place of innocence will not receive them after death; and that here on earth, they will live ever in the likeness of their own evil selves, and with evil friends - when they hear this they, in their superior cunning will seem to be listening to the talk of idiots.
His point is that there is a divine truth to which it is evil not to conform. If we fail to conform to this truth there will be consequences. We will not be received into “the place of innocence.” Yet even in his day he recognized that such an assertion of an absolute truth that governs the universe and to which we should conform will be met by some as “the talk of idiots.” They instead will seek their own truth through “superior cunning.”
Perhaps Paul had this passage in the back of his mind when he warned the church not to allow anyone to take them “captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elementary principles of the world, and not according to Christ.” He also knew that, “the cross is folly to those who are perishing . . . a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Whether he had this view in mind or not, it is easy to see how some classic Greek philosophers view of truth allowed early Christian thinkers to latch on to Platonic philosophy and use some of its concepts to express Christian doctrine. The rather nebulous ideals or forms in Platonic philosophy take on concrete meaning in the Living God, the Logos of John 1, who has made known the Father. For Jesus Christ, the Divine Logos, “is the image of the invisible God” in whom “all things hold together.” The world exists as an eternal reality that reflects the will of God who created it and sustains it through His Son Jesus.
But our modern society has largely rejected the truth that there is an objective standard to which we are called to conform. This represents a shift away from a more classical view of freedom, and certainly from the biblical view of freedom, which sees freedom as emerging, not from choosing, but from choosing what is right, choosing the good.
This is the type of freedom Jesus speaks of in John 8:31-36:
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
For Jesus freedom is inextricable from abiding, or keeping, his word, which is truth. Only when one holds on to and chooses what is true will one be free.
When his audience protests that they are Sons of Abraham and “have never been enslaved to anyone” (perhaps forgetting their 400-year enslavement in Egypt) Jesus reinforces the fact that freedom is found in choosing what is right by pointing out that, “everyone who commits a sin is a slave to sin.”
Far from seeing freedom as lying in unlimited choices, Jesus declares that our very choices can enslave us if we choose sin over righteousness. Only when the bond of sin is broken are we free to choose the good - to choose Jesus. Thus, only “if the son sets you free” will you be “free indeed.” Only when we are released from the bondage of our sinful will which constantly deceives us and chooses that which enslaves us, will we be able to experience the freedom of God
From a biblical perspective, true freedom comes from abiding in Christ who then works in us through the Spirit to conform our being to him. This is our telos, our true end, the true end of all things, for “all things were created through him and for him.” When we choose that which leads us to Christ, that which he calls us to, and that which he commands, we are on the true path of freedom.
