We recently celebrated our nation’s 238th birthday with great pomp and circumstance, fireworks, hotdogs, and parades. With all the problems we have in this nation, I still believe we are one of the greatest nations in the world, and it is good for us to celebrate the freedom God has allowed us to enjoy. As Americans, we cherish our freedom. We sing “let freedom ring,” and we fight for the freedom of others.
Strangely, in the midst of celebrating and valuing our freedom we have begun to misconstrue what it means to be free. We tend to think of freedom as being free from something, and that is true to an extent. In our culture, however, we tend to equate being free from something with being free to do whatever I want because I am free from others’ oppressive and limiting views.
We see this everywhere now. The stream of buzzwords like “tolerance,” “equality,” and “choice” is endless. Slogans like, “Don’t like abortion, don’t get one,” “Don’t like gay marriage, don’t have one,” “Keep your opinion out of my bedroom,” etc. get thrown around as if bumper sticker phrases offer a significant rebuttal to deep philosophical arguments. Ah, but that’s the problem isn’t it? Where are those making the deep philosophical arguments regarding the cultural issues we face today?
The church, along with the culture, has lost the art of thinking well and it has often failed to remember that freedom is much more than being freed from something, even if that freedom is from sin. Ultimately, freedom means much more than this.
What is Good
Before we can understand this deeper view of freedom we need to understand another very misunderstood word in our culture, good. What is good? It is not whatever I happen to like, choose, or decide. Classically, good means something very specific. Good is that which fulfills the end/purpose of something according to its nature, that is, according to what it is. Something is good to the extent that it is perfect, and a thing is perfect to the extent that it lacks nothing it should have according to its nature.
For example, the purpose of your eye is to hear. No? Oh, I’m sorry, it must be to taste then. Still not right? Very good. You’re well on your way to being a good philosopher. We all know that the purpose of your eye is to see. Thus, an eye that sees as well it should is a “good” eye. My friend is experiencing the early stages of glaucoma. Thus, his eyes do not function as they should. They are not perfect because they are lacking something they should have, thus his eyes are not as good as they should be.
Notice that in order to know what constitutes the good for some thing we must know what that thing is. We know what eyes are (they’re nature so to speak), thus we know what makes for a good eye. Note that this is completely objective. It doesn’t change regardless of what someone thinks their eyes should do or whether or not they like their eyes. All creatures, us included, desire whatever we take to be good for us. We seek our perfection. Hold on to that, as we’ll be coming back to it momentarily.
It’s evident that we can know what things are. We may at times be mistaken, but that doesn’t change the fact that we can know what things are. You just saw that for yourself when you knew what an eye is. Because of this, we can know what constitutes the good of the thing as we’ve said. If we can know what an eye is, or an apple, or a tree, etc. then we can certainly know what a human being is. Thus, because we can know what a human being is we can know what constitutes the good of that human being.1
This is where moral goodness enters the picture. We all pursue what we take to be good for us as we’ve said. This is undeniable. Even when we do things we know are bad, we do so because we take the good of the result to outweigh the bad. Now, reason tells us what is actually good for us. Remember the eye example and the fact that good is that which fulfills the end/purpose of something according to its nature. Therefore, the rational person will pursue what is actually good for them even when their feelings and environment tell them otherwise. What we feel should be judged on the fact of what we know, and our wills should follow our intellect (what we know).2
Consider an alcoholic. Given the purpose of a human being and all his various faculties, we know objectively that drinking in excess is not good because it damages and/or hinders the fulfillment of the ends/purposes of his various faculties. Thus, being an alcoholic is bad regardless of how much he enjoys drinking and even if he never hurts anyone else. Notice that it is irrelevant whether his alcoholism stems from purely genetic factors or not. Say it does. That doesn’t make it good anymore than being born blind means you have good eyes. No! You have defective eyes that don’t fulfill their purpose and thus their good.
The Abandonment of Natures
It is the abandonment of this view of human nature that has led to the cultural crises in which we now find ourselves. The view known as nominalism says their are no universal natures of things, everything is only a particular instance of a thing. Thus, there is no human nature and therefore nothing to be objectively known as good or bad for human beings. Hence, have your abortion. It’s just a blob of cells to you. Change the definition of marriage and marry someone of the same sex. Things like marriage and gender are human inventions according to the nominalistic view.
But wait, we know what an eye is and what it’s for. We know what an apple is and we don’t accidentally come home with oranges from the grocery store. And in reality, we know what a human being is and we can’t consistently live out a nominalistic view. Aside from the fact that nominalism ends up being self-defeating (since there is at least the universal concept “nominalism” to which we are referring), as Peter Kreeft says, if you are really a nominalist consistently “and if you actually practice the philosophy you preach, then please do not invite me to your house for dinner, for you must believe that it is impossible to draw a real and absolute line between people and animals, in which case you may be either a vegetarian or a cannibal—two tastes I do not share.)”3 Lived out consistently, nominalism leads to absurdity.
True Freedom
What has any of that got to do with freedom? Everything actually. We can’t talk about “equality” and anyone’s “right” to anything without talking about what a person is and what is good for them and if such rights actually exist. As we’ve said, what we ought to do is based on what we are. Take the homosexual behavior for example. As Edward Feser says, “…what is good for human beings in the use of [sexual] capacities is to use them only in a way consistent with [their procreative and unifying purposes]. This is a necessary truth; for the good for us is defined by our nature and the [purposes] of its various elements. It cannot possibly be good for us to use them in any other way, whether an individual person thinks it is or not, any more than it can possibly be good for an alcoholic to indulge his taste for excessive drink…”4 Thus, homosexual behavior is necessarily bad because it is contrary to the purposes of our sexual capacities. Hence, no rights are being violated by not affirming such behavior.
Trying to be something we are not is not freedom. It is the annihilation of ourselves no matter how much my feelings and confused ideas tell me otherwise. A man trying to be a woman, a woman trying to be a man, a mother trying to not be one, etc. are all attempts to annihilate reality. And it doesn’t matter whether there is a genetic component to such desires or not. Such a fact would simply mean we should have that much more compassion for folks struggling with these issues.
Os Guinness says, “Freedom is not the permission to do what you like, it’s the power to do what you ought.”5 This is precisely the opposite view of freedom in our culture, but it is the biblical view. It’s not that folks in our culture are trying to seek something bad. Remember, we all seek what we to take to be good for us. It’s that they seek some good in the wrong way. That’s what the Bible calls sin. Paul said in Gal. 5:1, “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” We all fail at being the people we ought to be, and that’s precisely why we need a Savior and why Jesus died and rose again to pay the penalty for our sins. Through trust in Him we are covered by the righteousness of God who is Goodness itself.
When we trust in Christ as our Savior we no longer have to worry about striving to be good enough. We can never be good enough. Rather, He sets us free to be who we ought to be as He conforms us to His image. That is true freedom, and that is something to be celebrated everyday.
ENDNOTES
1. I am greatful to Peter Kreeft for this formulation of the argument: http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/personhood_apple.htm
2. I am greatful to Edward Feser for his work in this are in both Aquinas and The Last Superstition.
3. Peter Kreeft, Squares of Three Sides, http://www.peterkreeft.com/audio/11_moral-theology/square_three-sides.htm
4. Feser, The Last Superstition.
5. Os Guinness, http://www.bethinking.org/is-there-meaning-to-life/os-guinness-on-big-questions/3-truth