True freedom. Part 5

True freedom

Part 5: If you love someone, pleasing them is not surrendering your freedom but fulfilling it

So far, we have considered the atheistic appeal of freedom from God, and some answers that a believer would give. However, it is still necessary for the believer to go further and outline what true freedom might be – a freedom that is understood as a freedom that is enjoyed within their relationship with God. Two key questions present themselves:-

• Is it possible to have true freedom if you are taking account of God?
• What might this freedom entail?

The first question is relatively easy (!) to answer – at least in principle. If the believer agrees completely with God, then doing exactly what God wants will be doing the same as doing exactly what you want. There is no sense of God imposing a moral code that you’d rather avoid – if only you were free, or of submitting unwillingly, or of accepting some sort of deal: “I’d rather do x, y, and z, but if I do I will lose things that are even more precious, so I guess I’ll have to “suffer” now in order to get what I want”. Instead, the believer is completely won over by the vision of life that God offers them, and gives themselves body, mind and soul to these values. They love what God loves and want nothing other than this. All this, the believer will see very clearly, and if there are elements that they don’t understand, they will have such complete trust in God that they will gladly “go along” with what God is saying, and hope to understand one day. This is pretty straightforward. Of course, there are the huge issues to do with human temptation and weakness, such that the believer finds it extremely difficult, and often impossible, to do the things that they genuinely believe in. This is certainly a very big issue indeed, and is addressed elsewhere, but for now, I believe we have successfully answered the first question. The atheist wanted freedom from God because they felt a difference between what they wanted and what God wanted, and they didn’t want to give way to God. However, for the believer – as they grow in spiritual maturity – there is no difference and so doing what God wants is perfect freedom because it is also what they want. Given what we’ve said about human frailty, the believer enjoys a dynamic, vibrant freedom, because “obeying what God wants” is a fast-track way to achieving a fully moral and satisfying life, quicker than waiting until you see for yourself that this is the ideal way of life.