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.