{"id":6819,"date":"2020-10-21T21:26:06","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T11:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=6819"},"modified":"2020-10-21T21:26:07","modified_gmt":"2020-10-21T11:26:07","slug":"afraid-to-be-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/afraid-to-be-free\/","title":{"rendered":"Afraid To Be Free"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Afraid To Be Free<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Fr Antonios Kaldas, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Originally seen on Fr Antonios Kaldas blog site, 8 October 20<\/em>12<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Most people take it for granted that each of us is\nfree to choose in life. But some philosophers, such as Jean-Paul Sartre,\nclaim that most people do not really want to be free. Choices have real\nconsequences, and freedom brings with it responsibility. People do not want to\nbe held responsible for the consequences of their actions. What if I make the\nwrong decision? What if the consequences are bad? I don\u2019t want to be held to\nblame! I don\u2019t want to feel guilty. And so, people seek ways to shift the\nresponsibility on to someone or something else, whether they know they are\ndoing this or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One famous way of doing this is \u201cthe devil made me do\nit\u201d. But a more subtle way of shifting responsibility is to lay it upon\nGod, or upon His representatives on earth. Sartre points out that when a person\nadopts a faith, they surrender some of their freedom. They surrender the\nfreedom to decide for themselves what is right and wrong, for by subscribing to\ntheir faith\u2019s moral code, that decision is taken out of their hands. Of course,\neach person is still free to choose whether to obey<\/em> their faith\u2019s moral code or not \u2013 they are still\nquite free and quite responsible in that sense, but they are no longer\nresponsible for the content of the moral code itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I do not see this as a bad thing in itself. We humans are,\nafter all, quite fallible, and we have a disturbing tendency to try to cheat to\nmake life comfortable for ourselves. If there is a genuinely objective right\nand wrong in the world (as most people would agree there is), then we are much\nmore likely to find it when God tells us what it is than when are left to work\nit out for ourselves. We\nare just far too prone to seeing things in ways that are convenient to us\ninstead of seeing them as they really are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there is a variation on this that can be quite harmful and can\ndo a lot of damage. That is, when we confuse the Truth of God for the teachings\nof men. All men are fallible, whoever they are. Jesus Himself criticised the\nscribes and Pharisees for teaching the precepts of men as if they were the\ncommandments of God. Perhaps this too is a responsibility that each of us has,\nto do our best to distinguish between those moral laws that are of human origin\nand those that are divine. As a priest, it is incumbent upon me also to specify\nclearly to people when I am \u201cquoting God\u201d and when I am speaking off my own\nbat. There is a big difference between me encouraging someone to forgive\nsomeone who has hurt them and me encouraging someone to make a particular\ncareer choice I think suits them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a sin to surrender your freedom to another human being.\nJust as we cannot say, \u201cthe devil made me do it\u201d, neither will the excuse, \u201cbut\nI was just following orders\u201d carry any weight. Few people today would excuse\nthe foot soldiers responsible for carrying out the atrocities of Nazi Germany\nor Bosnia because they were \u201cjust following orders\u201d. And yet, we humans appear\nto have a disturbing need to obey even the worst of orders. The famous\nexperiments of Stanley Milgram last century are testimony to that horrible\nreality about us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet this disturbing tendency seems to crop up in all aspects of\nlife. For example, many employees are daily tested as to whether they will\nfollow orders and do things they know or at least suspect deep down to be immoral.\nStudents in a school playground are daily tested as to whether they will just\nfollow the crowd or the popular kids instead of standing up for what they know\nto be right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it happens in Churches too. How many people in the Catholic\nChurch were aware or suspicious of the terrible child abuse that is only now\nbeing gradually uncovered? Why did so many otherwise decent, compassionate and\nhonest people remain silent about it? Quite simply, because they were told to,\nwhether overtly or implicitly, by the hierarchy of the Church. And they\nsurrendered their responsibility to these leaders. As a result of this silence,\nthe abuse continued for far longer and spread far further than it should have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are practical reasons for accepting responsibility. Pastor\nMartin Niemoller was imprisoned for taking personal responsibility for speaking\nout against the Hitler regime. His chilling words illustrate one of these\nreasons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 First they came for the Socialists, and I did not\nspeak out \u2013<\/em> because I was\nnot a Socialist.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did\nnot speak out \u2013<\/em> because I was\nnot a Trade Unionist.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out \u2013<\/em> because I was not a Jew.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then they came for me \u2013 and there was no one left to speak for\nme.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As Christians, we cannot live alone. We do not have the\nluxury of saying, \u2018it\u2019s fine, so long as I am alright\u2019. As the Desert Father\nsaid, \u2018our life and death is with our brothers\u2019<\/em>. Anything\nthat hurts another human being hurts me, for we all share the same image of\nGod. As Christians, we are <\/em>our\nbrother\u2019s and sister\u2019s keepers. This is what divine love means. This is the\nlove modelled by Jesus \u2018who, being\nin the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made\nHimself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the\nlikeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and\nbecame obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross\u2019<\/em> (Philippians\n2:6-8).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether we like it or not, we are free. It was God\nwho created us free. Free to help or ignore others in need. Free to stand\nsilently while atrocities and injustices are perpetrated, or to speak against\nthem, whatever the cost. And yes, we can try to surrender this freedom to make\nlife a little less scary for ourselves, but the price for such a surrender is\nhigh, O so high! It is nothing less than our very humanity itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Original blog available at- http:\/\/www.frantonios.org.au\/2012\/10\/08\/afraid-to-be-free\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Afraid To Be Free By Fr Antonios Kaldas, Originally seen on Fr Antonios Kaldas blog site, 8 October 2012 Most people take it for granted that each of us is free to choose in life. But some philosophers, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, claim that most people do not really want to be free. Choices have real … Continue reading “Afraid To Be Free”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6820,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[96],"class_list":["post-6819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-fear"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6819"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6821,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6819\/revisions\/6821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}