Monday, October 1, 2018
620 - Freedom and Responsibility
Spirituality Column #620
October 2, 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Freedom and
Responsibility
By Bob Walters
“It is the nature of
love to bind itself.” G.K. Chesterton, The Defendant
I’m pretty
sure the very epitome of freedom has far less to do with what we are free from
than what we have chosen to be responsible to.
This freedom – or lack of it – is
what shapes our attitudes and faith: the freedom to bind ourselves to that
which we think, feel, and experience as life’s ultimate purpose, joy, and
worth. It is within these boundaries
that we will explore, find, experience, and share love; it is within these
boundaries that we will discover Jesus Christ.
Outside these boundaries? Satan and the world await.
Chesterton, the great 20th
century Christian apologist and forerunner of C.S. Lewis, wrote often about how
love, freedom, “binding,” and Jesus Christ form an inseparable equation of
humanity’s best formula for glorifying God and discovering life’s most profound,
shared human joys – the love, hope, forgiveness, and salvation of Jesus
Christ. And we note that Chesterton wasn’t
talking about the “binding and loosing” of things on heaven and earth the way
we often think of it as written in Matthew 16:18-19.
No, Chesterton was talking about
the responsibility we undertake as humans to form relationships, help our
fellow man, raise our children, worship our God, run our affairs, govern our
nation, organize our communities, and recognize right and wrong in light of
personal and sacrificial God-honoring love. Not every culture, government, political
persuasion, or religion in history (or today) has considered these to be
essential and divine elements of human endeavor. While kings, emperors, dictators, and despots
separate mankind from this freedom, Jesus insists on it and America was founded
on it.
It’s far more than mere “freedom of
religion” that defines the great American “We the People” experiment in
self-determination and societal mobility.
Despite grave religious and specifically Christian doctrinal disputes of
that era, the early American, Enlightenment-era thinkers considered and penned
our formative documents based on the moral assurance of God’s existence and
mankind’s moral obligations to Him and to other humans. This was preponderantly true even among the
agnostics and deists.
What Jesus brings to the freedom
equation is that He knows God’s true, divine love energizes the human heart
only when fueled by free will. These weld
the Godly clasp that freely binds us to goodness, mercy, hope, and heaven; not
the foul shackles that condemn us to earthly misery, dissension, despair,
debauchery, and death.
It is our binding with Jesus we
should treasure for ourselves, teach to our children, and share with our
neighbor; for Satan is the author of the other.
The evil world – especially today in a million media, academic, and
political ways – insists we must intellectually and behaviorally be chained to
its popular but unholy norms.
No, our responsibility and joy is
to be bound in freedom with Christ. It
makes a world of difference, and is the only thing that will make a difference
in the world.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) adds: “It is absurd to say that you are
especially advancing freedom when you only use free thought to destroy free
will.” - Chesterton