Cleaning house...

Yes, and no.

I've been working on some "articles" (because I don't know what else to call them) and since they're not ready yet, I decided to take some time to brush up an old abstract concepts essay I had to write one time last year.  What do you think?  Is it too late for Memorial Day and too early for the Fourth?  Does it even pertain to either of them?  Ah well, tell me what you think of it... it was for my Logic course so it may have been forced, but at least I enjoyed myself that day.

Freedom

…O say, does that star spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.  America has long been celebrated as a country of freedom.  But what is freedom and how do we know if we really have it?

Freedom, like truth, is treated as somewhat of an abstract theory, but it isn’t.  Freedom, like truth, is concrete reality.  When you have ‘freedom’, you are free from something real.  But from what are we free?  Proclaiming Liberty throughout the land is no good if you don’t have liberty from something.  The opposites of freedom are tyranny, oppression, and slavery.  But freedom is two-fold.  America’s founders sought to be free from something and also to be free for something.

When you describe ‘freedoms from’, you first think of the freedom from human slavery, freedom from religious persecution, freedom from tyrannical rules, and freedom from unchecked lawlessness.  ‘Freedoms for’ bring to mind the freedom to speak, freedom to bear weapons, freedom to vote, freedom to choose rulers, and freedom to do right.  Even these don’t quite do justice to the beauty of freedom.  Every human soul longs for freedom- the good desire for freedom from evil, the sinful desire to do whatever they please. 

If you want real freedom, or liberty, you must first know what it is and then how to pursue it.  In the Bible we are told that before a man is converted, he is in bondage to sin.  He cannot do right and he cannot even do anything to free himself.  This is the total opposite of freedom.  Real freedom is the ability to do what you are supposed to do.  When Christ frees a person from the curse of sin and death, redeeming them to Himself for perfection and glorification, he is in essence giving them complete freedom- true freedom, the ability and the desire to do right.