True Freedom

Augustine wrote of the pleasure of stealing fruit simply for the pleasure of stealing it. Often people are pleased to do wrong simply because it is wrong.

You see man is angry against law and there is a part of him which wishes to break law for the sake of breaking law. Man wishes to express his freedom.

You see man defines freedom in having things his own way. He is free if he can do what he pleases and he is never truly free.

You see only under anarchy could man truly be free if freedom is having things each man’s own way. And in anarchy the strong will have their way over the weak so no one can ever be truly free in this definition.

Often freedom is rephrased into an ability to choose. You see even here there are issues.

Man would often choose this car or that house but they belong to another. You see if each person is free to choose than many cannot choose since of a limit of supply.

Really the man who wishes to have freedom in this way is never free. He is always in one way or another outmatched. He cannot have absolute freedom.

Christianity redefines freedom. Freedom is the ability of man to do God's will.

It seems sort of laughable to man that man's freedom is service to God. But you see man was made for this purpose.

I have found that doing God's will often leads to happiness and breaking God's will often leads to sadness. I suppose it is what you would expect if you accept the Christian teaching that God created man.

If God created man to be most free in doing God's will it is not surprising that he also created man to most enjoy doing God's will.

Many people of course say that the church is boring and a place of suffering. It is true in a sense it is a congregation of men who have barely woken from spiritual death and some may still need awakening.

Often we confuse feeble religion or fake religion for the real thing. Feeble religion is real but at a low form. It is often the lowest forms of religion which are critiqued.

It is if we reject music as potentially beautiful upon hearing a sampling of 5 middle school concerts. You see there are very few who get far in the faith.

The way is narrow and we tend to see the masses that are off the path or barely a few miles down it. True deep religion is infinitely beautiful. Shallow religion beautiful but often in many sense painful as well.