Sunday, April 8, 2018

How our freedom should be


WE often ask these questions. How should our freedom be?
What law governs it? Where can we find a model or pattern for it?
  
            Many people, of course, have their own ideas of freedom.
But if we really want to know what it is, where it can be found, how
it should be exercised, etc., we have nothing to do other than to look
at God who is the source and end of freedom—and God in relation to us.
Without referring to God, our idea of freedom can be anything but the
right one.
  
            And what can we see in God with respect to freedom? The
direct answer is that God did everything for us completely free,
without any special reason, without any pressure. We can say that he
did all those wonderful things for us because he just wants to. In our
local lingo, he did them because “trip ko lang!”
  
            What he did and continues to do to us can only be
characterized as being completely free. It was pure grace,
unadulterated gratuitousness. That in the end is what freedom is all
about.
  
            He created us freely. There was no necessity on his part
to create us. But he did it just the same. He endowed us with the best
things, such that we became his image and likeness, adopted children
of his. There was no need for him to do that to us. But again he did
it just the same.
   
            And even if we spoiled his original design for us by
falling into sin, by going against his will which can only be good for
us, he did not leave us and, instead, promised to redeem us. He would
have lost nothing nor gained anything if he would have just allowed us
to get lost. But, no, he preferred to save us.
  
            There was no necessity for him to send his son who became
man to redeem us. But he did it—completely freely. The son, Christ,
did not have to offer his life on the cross to save us. There are many
other ways to do that. But he chose it freely because it was the best
way to save us, respecting our human nature that needs also to be
responsible for our salvation.
  
            He is willing to assume all our sins without committing
sin. He offers us boundless mercy for the taking. He did all these
completely freely, completely gratuitously. He actually gains nothing,
but we gain everything if we follow him in living that kind of
freedom.
  
            We need to process these considerations of freedom slowly
so as to reflect them little by little in our lives. It will take time
and a lot of effort to imbibe this kind of freedom which can only be
the genuine one. Outside of this, our idea of freedom can never be
right. It can have some aspects of freedom, but not the whole, true
one.
  
            We cannot deny that this freedom as shown by God is not
easy to learn. But we have to reassure ourselves that God actually has
also given us all the graces and means for us to learn and live it. We
just have to be humble enough to defer to this kind of freedom, the
only true freedom, rather than subscribing to our own ideas of it.
This is the freedom of the children of God, not the freedom of the
children of the world.
  
            This is the freedom that leads us to the truth and to our
eternal destination and heaven. It knows how to cope with all the
situations of our earthly life. It does not give us false hopes nor
lead us to fantasies.


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