We know that freedom does not mean just doing what I like when I like without any regard for consequences. We have to, as it were, train our freedom so that we can sometimes choose to do something that is really difficult but which we know is in harmony with our fundamental choices.
In a few years (2017) we will celebrate the 500th centenary of Martin Luther’s decisive action that launched the Reformation. He had no intention of dividing the Church but the opposition he met with led him to harden his position and at the moment of his trial he simply said, ‘here I stand, I can do no other.’ In other words he chose to take the only stand he felt he could take. ‘He chose’ but in a sense he did not choose. ‘He had no choice,’ as we often say.
Priests and ministers of the Christian faith often notice that they are welcomed to conduct services for those who die. But the time comes when they are thanked and politely told they have done their job. Everyone knows that other ceremonies then take place that people feel they ‘have to’ perform even if these ceremonies are in conflict with what the priest or pastor has just done.
What is this connection between freedom and ‘have to’? Which sort of ‘have tos’ are expressions of freedom and which are not?
When Jesus was ‘lost’ in the temple at the age of 12 (Luke 2:41) he answered his parents anxious questions by saying, ‘I had to be about my Father’s business’. We are told they did not understand but, reflecting back, we can at least say that Jesus was absorbed by the will of his Father (John 4:34). While he was the most free human being that ever lived he was also the most ‘bound’. He told the two on the way to Emmaus, ‘ought not’ the Christ suffer (Luke 24:25).
Yes, we ‘are driven’ to act in certain ways and we often say ‘I have to do this.’ But Jesus is inviting us to look at what fundamentally drives us. Is all this compulsive activity we go in for really an expression of freedom? He calls us to look at what we do spontaneously: is it good?
Post published in: Faith