Liberty
A Compendium Entry
“Is the problem that society is preventing my well-being by stepping on my will or that my will is leading me in ways that are detrimental to my well-being?
-MakeGoodHappen with Randy Lovejoy
“I am bound not with another man’s iron but with my own iron will. I gave my will to mine enemy, and he made a chain and bound me with it.” -St. Augustine1
“When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.” -Charles Evans Hughes
lib·er·ty [liberté, French; libertas, Latin.]
/ˈlibərdē/
Merriam-Webster, contemporary
the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views.
the power or scope to act as one pleases.
"individuals should enjoy the liberty to pursue their own interests and preferences"
informal: a presumptuous remark or action.
Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, 1771
Freedom, as opposed to slavery.
Exemption from tyranny or inordinate government.
Freedom, as opposed to necessity.
Privilege; exemption; immunity.
Relaxation of restraint: as, he sees himself at liberty to chuse2 his condition. “License they mean, when they cry liberty.” Milton.
Leave; permission. “I shall take the liberty to consider a third ground, which, with some men, has the same authority.” Locke.
Bonus: Monty Python’s Definition (in a skit).3
MakeGoodHappen Definition:
Liberty is the opportunity to do what we were made to do.
In our journey with Jesus we are empowered to break the bonds that have been controlling us and make a full commitment to the ways made for us by our Creator.
ETYMOLOGY
The idea of liberty has narrowed in our day. In the late 14th century, the word entered the English language from the French liberte, meaning the freedom to choose. This general definition comes into sharper focus when we answer the question, “Freedom from what?” In the 18th century, freedom was defined as freedom from class barriers (freedom from slavery), from material want (freedom as confidence in the ability to meet our basic needs), and freedom from restraint (permission, privilege, immunity). In the French Revolution, liberty was defined as political equality. In the English Revolution (the “Glorious Revolution”) focused on personal independence. In our day freedom is the more common word for liberty, focusing on the right for an individual to act as one pleases, over against any social restrictions.
HOW IT MAKES GOOD HAPPEN
There is a consensus in our society that liberty means the freedom to choose. Our definitions begin to diverge when we answer the question, “What is keeping us from choosing what is best for us?” Westerners have answered with class structures, family systems, responsibility and expectations of community membership, religion, and, most popular today, oppressive social structures.
Christianity supports and challenges the assumptions of every human culture. As 21st-century Western culture struggles to implement the liberty (political equality) of the French Revolution, Christianity begins with the emphasis of the word in the English Revolution (personal independence). Jesus is the source of individual liberty for all who believe. Yet Christian liberty isn’t the freedom for us, as individuals, to do what we please. Bible authors found that when our individual will is unleashed it becomes a chain, like the one worn by the ghost of Bob Marley in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. It enslaves us, burdens us and holds us down.
Like Bob Marley, Ebenezer Scooge’s business partner, humans can live in bondage without seeing the chains. We all know people who think they are free when they are being held down by the chains of a cruel taskmaster. Even as they march and fight for social justice 4 they are held down by their own habits.
“He sees and approves better things, he follows the worse.” -Ovid.
The primary need for every human being is liberty from the oppression of our shared passions and desires that are ultimately self-destructive. As the ancient Greeks and Romans recognized, the essential responsibility of every human being is to develop our own virtue so we might strengthen our family ties, deepen our relationships with others through thick and thin, and be the source of peace for our community. Christianity helps us to makegoodhappen.
…where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. -2 Corinthians 3:17b
Yet the Christian definition of liberty also shares the emphasis of the French Revolution on political equality. The Bible acknowledges unjust political systems and looks beyond systemic differentiation between citizens to see everyone equally. But it challenges the approach of the French Revolution with something like the following question: “What can we liberate ourselves from without getting ourselves into worse trouble?” Christianity stands against the view that we cannot change the establishment. But, and this frustrates many Western readers of the Bible, it also stands against the idea, embodied in the French Revolution, that we will discover the world we have always wanted by pulling down everything that past generations have built. Christianity believes that the world without tears, injustice and fear will come. But it will come as a gift at its appointed time. Understanding life within this framework gives us an unusual (in our day) view of life and liberty.
We have been liberated by Jesus.
“…to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.” -Luke 1:74-75
“Truly I am your servant, Lord;
I serve you just as my mother did;
you have freed me from my chains.” -Psalm 116:16
The ways of God, which were onerous before, have become the path to even greater liberty.
“They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.” -Psalm 19:10
Greater service to God become fresh “chains” by which we bind ourselves to greater freedom.
“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” -2 Corinthians 3:17b
“Our nobility - she replied - lies in this; that we are the servants of Christ.” -Agatha, a martyr who had been upbraided by her family for leaving her illustrious upbringing to humbly follow Christ.
Our job is to challenge injustice within the present order.
“I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people – for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.” -I Tim 2:1-2
“‘You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” -Matthew 5:43-48
The freest person I have ever met was a middle-aged prisoner. Lust had destroyed his marriage, his career, family and his friendships. But it was in the depths of this loss, while he was serving his time in jail, that he learned to trust in Jesus. His joyful greeting and friendly embrace showed me the deepest freedom I have ever experienced. He simply exuded freedom. My prayer is that I will voluntarily be empowered to give everything over to Jesus so that his liberty will fill my life, my relationships and my local community.
'“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God…until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.” -Ephesians 3:16-19 and 4:13-15
The Confessions of St. Augustine, viii.6.
A now archaic spelling of “choose.”
Scene from Monty Python’s Holy Grail:
[King Arthur music]
[thud thud thud]
[King Arthur music stops]
ARTHUR: Old woman!
DENNIS: Man!
ARTHUR: Man. Sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there?
DENNIS: I'm thirty-seven.
ARTHUR: I-- what?
DENNIS: I'm thirty-seven. I'm not old.
ARTHUR: Well, I can't just call you 'Man'.
DENNIS: Well, you could say 'Dennis'.
ARTHUR: Well, I didn't know you were called 'Dennis'.
DENNIS: Well, you didn't bother to find out, did you?
ARTHUR: I did say 'sorry' about the 'old woman', but from the behind you looked--
DENNIS: What I object to is that you automatically treat me like an inferior!
ARTHUR: Well, I am King!
DENNIS: Oh, King, eh, very nice. And how d'you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers! By 'anging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society. If there's ever going to be any progress with the--
WOMAN: Dennis, there's some lovely filth down here. Oh! How d'you do?
ARTHUR: How do you do, good lady? I am Arthur, King of the Britons. Who's castle is that?
WOMAN: King of the who?
ARTHUR: The Britons.
WOMAN: Who are the Britons?
ARTHUR: Well, we all are. We are all Britons, and I am your king.
WOMAN: I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective.
DENNIS: You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship: a self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--
WOMAN: Oh, there you go bringing class into it again.
DENNIS: That's what it's all about. If only people would hear of--
ARTHUR: Please! Please, good people. I am in haste. Who lives in that castle?
WOMAN: No one lives there.
ARTHUR: Then who is your lord?
WOMAN: We don't have a lord.
ARTHUR: What?
DENNIS: I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week,...
ARTHUR: Yes.
DENNIS: ...but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting...
ARTHUR: Yes, I see.
DENNIS: ...by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,...
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: ...but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major--
ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
WOMAN: Order, eh? Who does he think he is? Heh.
ARTHUR: I am your king!
WOMAN: Well, I didn't vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don't vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, how did you become King, then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake,...
[angels sing]
...her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur.
[singing stops]
That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well, but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!
ARTHUR: Shut up, will you? Shut up!
DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!
DENNIS: Oh, what a give-away. Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That's what I'm on about. Did you see him repressing me? You saw it, didn't you?
Titus 3:3: “At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.”