Freedom

Freedom, what is it? We cry for it! We scream for it! There is so much hype about it! MTV makes a big deal of it. We make reference to it in our thought, word and deed. We want it! We want the freedom to be ourselves. I’m not referring to the 1947 love story. But to the freedom we crave for; freedom from our parents, our teachers, society and sometimes even from ourselves! We want the freedom to do as we please. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” So what is freedom? Can we really be free?

Freedom is never free. The very thought of freedom, in the first place, is binding. The more we think of being free the more we are bound by the thought of being free. So we can never really be free. The freedom that we crave for comes with consequences. We can crave to be freed from the law of gravity and jump off a building but we cannot free ourselves from the consequence of making our bodies a bag of broken bones. Even a bungee jumper does not attempt to be free from a shock cord, unless s/he wishes to face the consequences of a cracked skull. The only time we will really be free is when we have become mentally deranged.

The wisdom of Fairy Tales shows us better. G.K Chesterton says, "If you happen to read fairy tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the other--the idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics, is the core of the nursery-tales." Cinderella got the freedom she wanted but it came with restrictions. Every football game needs restrictions - you cannot throw the ball into the goal; you cannot turn the match into a boxing tournament. If you do you will have the honor of warming your seat in the stands. Cinderella had to be back at a particular time set by the fairy. If she did not, the horses would turn back to mice, the coachman to a rat, the coach a pumpkin, the footmen to lizards and her beautiful gown to rags. Cinderella later experimented with her freedom – her pretty gown did turn to rags and the enhanced bandwagon turned back into the prosaic motley crew. The only thing that remained was her glass slipper which was the most transparent of the lot.

Man lacks the capability to be completely free. If he frees himself from something he will bind himself to something else – to something worse – to the devil probably. Unrestrained freedom perverts us. Be it an unhealthy interest in sex or hovering around a pharmaceutical freak club, you will inevitably end up with a muddled mind and a tangled heart. The closest we can get to freedom is when we understand who we are. The only way to understand who we are will be in relation to the one who created us. To choose to take on the role of a ‘superman’ in the Nietzchian sense, i.e. the freedom to create your own values, to subdue and over power weaklings and then to live by it, will result in the birth of another Hitler or another Columbine. If we assume we have come from a monkey we will behave like a monkey, leading us back into the very madness we need so much to get out of.

For Cinderella, ‘her hope’- the glass slipper brought the prince back to her. It is the image of God in us- ‘our hope’- that keeps nudging us back to Him. Just like the prince who came looking for Cinderella, Jesus comes looking for us. No matter how far we run away from Him we are always running towards him (Psalm 139:7-14).  It takes a genius to put the Rubik’s cube back in order. Similarly, it takes God, our creator, to put our lives back together. Only the one who put us together can put us back together. Others may attempt and may even partially succeed, but only for a while. If we give ourselves completely to Him we will be fine again. No matter how mangled and ugly our lives have become he can make us beautiful again. When we play by the rules of the game the game is fair, fun and free. “If the Son sets you free you shall be free indeed”- John 8:36.

Bobby Thejus.

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