On America 250, Remember That True Freedom Is Built on Faith

Freedom is a word that is too easily thrown around.

America was built on freedom. The colonists’ freedoms were being infringed upon, so they rose against Britain to get them back. They won the freedom to govern themselves—and to do so in a way that was more aligned with their inalienable rights.

Unfortunately, freedom has become one of the most misunderstood words in the English language. Knowing what true freedom is and how to avoid the false notion of freedom is imperative for us to move America into the brightest future possible.

In common usage, someone is free if he can do whatever they wish. The more we are able to do whatever we want, with whomever we want, whenever we want, the freer we are. This type of freedom has been called unhindered liberty or even licentiousness. Under this conceptualization of freedom, all restrictions are bad. The more we are “free” to do as we please, the happier we will become—or so we are told.

In reality, this vision of freedom often ends in slavery to sin.

There is another view of freedom, though. In the Catholic understanding, there are two types of freedom: freedom for license, which I have just described, and authentic freedom.

Where license is freedom from something, authentic freedom is a freedom for something. We are given free will by God for a purpose: to love. We are fulfilled not when we do as we please, but when we do what we ought.

Unhindered liberty is built on selfishness, ego, and anti-religious philosophies. It sets the person up as his own god. This is the core of all sin. Just as in the Book of Genesis, it is the misconception that we can become gods and arbitrarily determine what is good ourselves.

Every sin is an attempt to make ourselves into gods. License is tempting because commands can be restricting. We often think that God’s laws are an attempt to take away our freedom. However, nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, unhindered liberty is a form of enslavement. The person consumed with self-centeredness is not truly free. He is shackled by selfish desires; he simply cannot help themselves. This comes at the detriment of the most important relationships and responsibilities.

Authentic freedom is built on faith. It is the understanding that freedom must be placed at the service of love.

“God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). Love can never be forced; true love must be freely given and received.

Therefore, the view we have of freedom heavily impacts how we view faith. For God will not and cannot force us to love Him. We must choose to be in a relationship with Him.

Choosing to worship Him above ourselves means handing over our self-centeredness and pride to Him. Our choice to live for Him and for love of others, though, leads to the freedom of true happiness.

It is then that we become people of love, justice, and virtue. It is then alone that we are able to flourish as human beings who were made for true and authentic freedom.

This is the freedom that we should celebrate on every Independence Day.

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