Freedom is not Free

Philosopher that I am...
I’ve been reflecting on this phrase:
“Freedom is not free.”

So many times in the life of the believer, we focus heavily on the sacrifice Christ made for us. I have no intention of diminishing that sacrifice, so please understand I grasp the necessity and sufficiency of that sacrifice. Paul tells us though (Romans 6) that we are to be actively participating in rejecting slavery to sin and actively living in freedom. Could it be that we focus too much on the one-time sacrifice that afforded us eternal life that we fail to strive to live the abundant life?

Is this also one of the causes of our division in America today? Have we read this phrase in the preterit: ‘Freedom was not free’, as if it were purchased for us by a one-time payment made by many soldiers of various racial backgrounds?

At the very least, we can see that one’s choices today affect his/her future freedoms.
Do my choices today affect other people’s liberty? Do our collective choices as a community affect present or future liberties?

Paul’s answer to living in freedom was spiritual discipline. Am I disciplining my life to live in the freedom Christ bought for me?

In America, I absolutely believe that Christ is the essential key to reconciliation. However, we as Christians (of every race and color) must discipline ourselves to both 1) live in the freedoms purchased by those who went before us and 2) ensure that others are granted those same freedoms. Until we do so, how are we being Christians? I’m not suggesting that America will ever solve its racial problems because America is a secular nation, but we as Christians can live Christ-like lives embracing all of humanity as it is.

“For the death he died, he died to sin once for all time; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So, you too consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭6:10-11‬ ‭CSB‬‬

Collision Course

Recently I was seated in a restaurant for breakfast while CNN was airing on a nearby TV.  The anchors were soliciting Facebook feedback to the question they were posing to various audiences.  The question was: "How can we finally eradicate slavery from the modern world?"

A man in Nigeria responded that the only way to eradicate slavery was to take all the wealth from rich people and redistribute it to the poor people.

A college-aged female responded that in order to eradicate slavery, we must provide jobs for everyone so that they have a purpose.

While these are interesting responses and we could discuss the positives and negatives of these potential solutions, each of these is based on a supposition of the cause of slavery.  More interesting to me, however, is the supposition behind the initial question, "How can we finally eradicate slavery from the modern world?"  The underlying, unstated assumption is that slavery is bad; this leads me to ask, "Why is slavery bad?"

Fundamentally, I agree that slavery is bad, however, that is because I have a Christian worldview in which humans have inherent value and purpose which is given them by the Creator.  Ignoring this and reasoning from the point of view to which our society has in general subscribed, namely atheism, and that we are the products of cosmic accidents, I am unable to substantiate that claim.  We are hard pressed to find any intrinsic value in human life which leads us to the relative morality that allows us to abort babies and perhaps take the lives of those who do not have what we esteem to be a 'good' quality of life. 

But following this same path of reasoning, it becomes more obvious that if our origins were not ordered, then our lives are the result of billions of cosmic accidents every day and over the past 4.0+ billion years.  In fact, the atoms and molecules that comprise me are unique from those that form you and may cause me to act in a way that you perceive 'bad'.  In reality, my decisions are nothing more than cosmic accidents waiting to happen.  Each individual is independent even though we may all share some general notion of the same moral code.

Without some universal guiding force, though, why does a ruling majority decide what is acceptable and what is not?  We have no inalienable rights endowed to us by the cosmos, we are nothing more than animated objects; we have no value and no purpose other than what we elect by the collision course of particles in our bodies and minds.  So, I ask again, "Why is slavery bad?"  The answer from this perspective is the most hated response from all generations of children, "Because I said so," except in this case, these aren't your mother's words, they are society's words.

Unborn into Slavery

I am a modern-day abolitionist. 

I have considered authoring a dystopian society book in which various social issues are resolved (human trafficking, abortion, and some situations of poverty) by marking babies to be delivered as abortees and then upon exit from the womb selling these living, non-humans into various forms of slavery. 

The institution of slavery in our history has marred the human past most notably in the pre-Revolutionary War to Civil War period in the present United States of America.  While slavery officially ended, we still struggle with the definition of humanity and rights.  These questions of equality were not resolved with the Civil War nor with the Civil Rights Movement.

When I entertain the notion that there is no God and that we are the result of random, evolutionary events, I have to question the very core of humanity.  What does it really mean to be human?  Why do we have rules of etiquette?  What institutions are critical to our existence and which are trivial?  Why is it that slavery is wrong?

The founders of our nation struggled with some of these questions since society at that time accepted slavery.  They wrestled with their consciences and finally succumbed to societal peer pressure.  Many of our founding fathers admitted, in dying, their regret for this decision.

With recent videos being released depicting leaders of Planned Parenthood describing the intentional alteration of the abortion process to protect and harvest certain organs from the unborn fetuses, similar to the dystopian society slavery I've imagined in my atheist/evolution-driven thinking, the unborn are clearly our slaves.  The question that remain for us today is clear.  Will we succumb to the societal peer pressure that encourages us to enslave the unborn or will we have the courage to defend and free the slaves?

Society-Defined Morality = Group Think

Imagine if I attempted to impose Chess rules on a game of Checkers.  Even though these games share the same playing board, they have different pieces, tactics, and objectives.  Now imagine governing a game of Mancala using Chess rules.  These 2 games don't even share the same board!

Society-defined morality suggests that whatever society deems to be moral is moral.  Whatever society believes to be good (subjective as there is no objective measure) is good. 

This is a popular philosophy of those attempting to eradicate conservative, Christian values.  Many times, these are people who consider themselves intellectuals.  For a moment, let me put aside my Christian views on topics, and explore this topic logically.

If society defines morality, then if there is some future society that esteems cannibalism to be good, then cannibalism is good in that society as their morals are defined by their society.  Furthermore, if a current society in a foreign place determines that cannibalism is good, then cannibalism is good in that society.  One step further, if a previous society of Americans had determined that cannibalism were okay, then cannibalism was good at that time until American society changed its opinion.

Much like governing the Checkers and Mancala games by Chess rules, as long as we subscribe to the society-defined morality, one society cannot judge another society.  Americans cannot judge future or past American societies or any foreign societies based on our current morality because it is completely defined by our society.

In other words, to believe in society-defined morality, I must agree that slavery was good while society approved of it and homosexuality was wrong until society approved of it.  Americans should not meddle in the affairs of other nations (including the World Wars), nor should we attempt to influence other nations.  When Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," who defined injustice and justice?

To disagree and say that a former society was wrong about their assessment is to trade one oppressive set of norms (those of the conservative Christian) for our current society's as well as completely reject the originally professed position that society defines morality. 

When one thinks this through logically, it is easy to see that one of the following must be true:
A) society-defined morality is correct; no closed society can ever be wrong in its actions, but interactions between societies are messy (say when one society imposes its standards on another).
B) society-defined morality is incorrect; humanity is constantly evolving into a more perfect society with some abstract and undefinable yet absolute morality that we cannot understand until infinite time has passed.
C) society-defined morality is incorrect; there is an absolute standard set by some outside entity (consistent with the conservative Christian view).
D) there is no spoon.

Society-defined morality is the epitome of group think by its very definition.  Let the intellectuals cringe at their colleagues who profess such mindless submission to society-defined morality.  True, rules of conduct must be established by someone.  If there is no outside entity to set objective standards, then we are indeed all to be governed by this mindless group think where we can rise to the level of our collective incompetence.  Consider the "wave" at a sporting event... it is clear evidence that a committee will make a decision that is dumber than the sum of its members.