Continuing on from Part 1, as we consider the varied ways our world understands 'freedom', lets look at comparisons within the following categories:
The individual and the collective
An individualistic society focuses on the good of the individual above the good of the group or society at large
The collective society focuses on the good of the group and thus the good of the individual within the group.
Each emphasises freedom for their priority and are willing to sacrifice 'freedom' on the side of what is not the priority.
Both can be abused. Too much focus on the individual at the expense of others is plain selfishness, while too much focus on the group at the expense of the individual can become people-pleasing and conforming for the sake of acceptance.
*But God says both the individual and the group are important - the church is described as 'one body' with 'many members'. While God knows each of us individually by name, Scripture is full of demonstrating and commanding self-denial and love for others
Rights and respect
An individualistic society is more concerned about personal rights, and a collectivistic society is more concerned about respect for others.
It's hard to find Scripture which talks about individual 'rights' for ourselves, but rather it speaks about denying ourselves. In fact 'rights' should be more about ensuring the good or 'rights' of others than demanding what we think is good for ourselves. Rather than 'my rights', as Christians we should be more interested in 'loving you'.
'But its my right to….' we cry. But are such things 'our rights'? We can become people who demand and defend our rights rather than humbly being thankful for the privileges and blessings we have and seeking how to treat others with love and respect.
In a society that emphasises freedom of personal 'rights' there is no freedom to do anything that might seem to violate someone's idea of their personal 'rights'. In a community that demands respect for elders, there is no freedom to publicly disagree with elders as it is seen as dishonouring/shaming them.
*Often we can demand from others what we should be seeking in God, or we are demanding from this temporal sin-sick world what will only be realised in the eternal glory-filled new heavens and earth.
Trust and Suspicion
The cultural context we come from will affect what we are used to as our normal 'boundaries', and thus our normal 'freedoms'. We are naturally likely to be trusting of those in leadership who help maintain the 'freedoms' and 'boundaries' we are familiar with and approve of, and be suspicious of those who don't.
Whether we are a child whose parent introduces a new rule or an adult whose government or workplace introduce a new rule, we are tempted to rebel against (or at least dislike) those restrictions and any enforcement of those restrictions.
In the West particularly, there is a large portion of society who are suspicious of anything that gives government more power, or infringes on any individual personal desires to keep living a certain way. Sadly as Westerners increasingly grow up in single parent families, they are not even seeing a husband and wife letting go of personal 'freedoms' for the good of the other spouse, and kids are growing up with fewer if any siblings by which to learn the realities of having to forgo one's own personal individual desires for the good of others and the family as a whole. This only enforces the learnt but problematic 'norm' that it is 'good' and 'right' to do what I want, how I want, when I want for my good.
Here in my part of the world, despite some level of problems arising from times of unquestioned loyalty to society elders and leaders, there is a sense of harmony and 'freedom' that can arise when people aren't angry, arguing, debating, disagreeing and insisting on their 'rights' all the time. Those who can build harmony are seen as positive for society. Again, squashing alternative opinions has its own set of problems, but seeking to live in a context that avoids quarrels, and strives for unity and peace has its benefits too... (and its worth considering that Christ's church is meant to be a place that both seeks unity in Christ, avoids unecessary quarrels and disputes, while also seeking truth and being willing to confront error).
What we are used to as normal and comfortable we then learn to trust, and we are naturally suspicious of what differs from that. What we trust is based on what we have learnt over multiple experiences is trustworthy and consistent/unchanging. What we don't have experience of we are normally more reticent to trust. I remember the first time we took our bookshop staff from here to Johannesburg and one of them needed to go on an escalator for the first time and was both highly suspicious of its safety and terrified. At that moment while we all felt extra 'free' to have an escalator instead of stairs, she felt like she was trapped into having to do something she did not want to do. Those who had experienced such a 'moving staircase' before were not as fearful, and we who had grown up with such inventions just walked straight on without a thought. It wasn't till we got to the bottom that we realised one staff member was not there with us and was still on the floor above us! But as she watched us all get on it multiple times and saw it working and we showed her how to get on and off, she took the plunge. A couple of days later after increased experience with it she was far less hesitant.
*Ultimately as Christians, the one whom we should trust is God alone. He is the only one who will always do right, do good, and speak truth. We need to seek to be trustworthy (faithfulness is a fruit of the Spirit - since God is always faithful), but we also need to seek to more and more trust God above man.
We also need to be more properly suspicious of what we hear, in such a way that we 'test' all things against God's truth, whether we are comfortable with it culturally or not.
We need to weigh up what we hear whether in personal discussions or media feeds and evaluate both sides of arguments and stories, and analyse news reports (Ephesians 5:10). We need to get and grow in knowledge and not just rely on second-hand information, and we need to constantly weigh up that knowledge. The first knowledge on a topic is often from people we are likely to agree with but it is useful to hear arguments from people who disagree also (Proverbs 18:17). We don't know everything and we need to also be suspicious of our own conclusions and be willing to adjust those conclusions, humbly be willing to be proved wrong, and humbly seek to expand our knowledge so as to discern truth and live in truth.
Rules and Relationship
Because we can often feel 'free' when we are in familiar environments (after all isn't it usually good to be 'home' where we think we can be 'free' to relax), we associate 'freedom' with the level of rules and the expectations of relationships we are familiar with.
When those dynamics shift or change, we feel inhibited or restricted. We don't like new rules and we don't like new constraints of relationships. I guess one of the most significant 'relationship' changes we can relate to is when a person gets married, lots of 'freedoms' are lost, but new ones are gained too.
For some societies a man's freedom in marriage still means having other women on the side. Other's consider it a elder's freedom to demand sex from a junior relative anytime they want. Others say sex is for marriage and marriage is exclusively between one natural man and a natural woman as long as they both shall live. The first says its freedom, the second says its freedom and these would call the third highly restrictive.
Yet the third would say it is freedom because you never have to fear being tossed over or divorced for another, nor do you have to fear sexually transmitted diseases. The third way which reflects God's way, may seem highly restrictive and limiting 'freedoms'.
*So if God's view of 'freedom' so easily can be defined on a human level as a 'restriction of freedom', we need to think carefully about what freedoms we pursue and what things we label as restrictions of freedom. We humans are apt to get the meanings mixed up if we rely on cultural definitions and divert from God's definitions. The even greater problem is when we think our definitions are God's definitions when all along they are just cultural definitions.
Evolution and Creation
Believe it or not, this relates to cultural worldviews - at this stage in history the West predominently believes God did not create the world or us, rather we evolved by chance - by accidental changes and an environment we are somehow able to manipulate/control as the 'highest evolved' beings and are responsible for preserving to enable a forever existing planet. This impacts all kinds of cultural decisions and perspectives. It removes proper acknowledgement of God's sovereignty, his purposeful creation and sustaining of his creation, and his eternal plans for mankind and thus how this world will end and if there is life after death. However, many other places in the world like here in Africa not only have a high population who are either Muslim or Christian and thus recognising to some degree the supreme power and control of God over creation, but even in traditional religion there is an acknowledgement of God as Creator and ultimate Power. It is true that some understandings of God are not built on biblical truth and thus mis-placed and in error, but the foundational acknowledgement of God is there.
Thus there develops a view about what are inherent human freedoms - one group chooses according to an acknowledgement that God has higher authority and knowledge and thus he determines what our freedoms should be, and the other chooses solely on the basis of limited human understanding and the knowledge of those particular humans a person is willing to listen to or is exposed to.
*However, I am reminded that since God is the Sovereign Creator and is sustaining his creation according to his eternal plans, the Christian is called to define, defend and promote freedom according to the truth of God's purposes and design, while also viewing this world as temporary and in sin-ridden decline toward eternal judgement. We are not responsible for preserving the world, rather we are responsible to correctly steward the creation for God's glory and praise and for the salvation of men and women, as we await a new heaven and new earth.
Ascribed and Achieved Honour
You might wonder what this has to do with freedom. But how we view freedom at least partly comes from how we gain (and therefore expect to be able to receive) honour. If we primarily see honour as something gained via birth and position, we will want to protect that, and if we gain honour primarily via achievement we will want to protect what we will see as a 'right' to achieve. Thus one particular ethnicity or gender in an achieved honour based context will want the freedom of equal 'rights' to do whatever it takes to 'achieve' any honours available in society. However, in a more ascribed honour context someone will want the 'right' to have their relationships, position, inheritance, or title, or privilege associated with it, protected. While all societies are a mixture of both to some degree, some will lean more on one aspect than the other.
We need to not see these things as only points of conflict but recognise that one may find withdrawal of freedoms in some aspects more impacting than others.
*But as Christians, we do not have to look to the world's ascribed or achieved honour in order to know honour. In Christ we have been gifted both his ascribed honour (we share as joint-heirs in his inheritance and his name), and his achieved honour (our sins are counted in what he did for us on the cross - his death achieved our righteous standing and paid our sin-debt, removed our guilt and covered our shame). If we rest in that, we don't have to fear any threats or challenges or risks to any positional or achieved honour on this earth. Often we may not realise how much these two impact our desire to hang on to benefits and aspects of this world, but they are issues we may need to take time to examine.
In thinking about these categories, we beg the question…so how should we respond?
The next posts in this series will look at this a little further, but before we go there, I think it will be helpful in Part 3 to share some thoughts I recently received from a friend who was thinking through some of the issues of freedoms and restrictions in 2021 in the light of 2 passages of Scripture - one Old Testament in the book of Numbers, and also 1 Peter in the New Testament.
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