Eric’s Sunday Sermon; What Price This Liberty?

There are all kinds of liberty and all kinds of ways to lose liberty. Is “to be free from” liberty or is “to be free to” liberty. I suppose those end up the same kind of liberty. Is “free will” liberty? Is marriage actually liberating. Personally I am at liberty to speak on these matters. Are you at liberty to read them? Are you at liberty from your internal resistance? How about outside pressures.

Is choice liberty. Liberty for sailors. Take the liberty. Land of liberty. Is obeying the law liberty or is paying taxes. Is fidelity liberty. Is losing a job liberty, how about divorce?

To do what I want when I want including going or not going someplace. Are liberty and obligations mutually exclusive? Responsibility? Children. Defense. Offense.

Seldom refers to laws – normally it is social norms.

It would seem that liberty has some strange off shoots. Liberalism would mean less interference from government but it means the opposite in practice. Some freed slaves got to go back home to Africa. They called the land Liberia – in English not in a native tongue. That makes no sense except that maybe they still were not free from the yolk. Now libertarian makes sense. They want a controlled chaos. Then again if that were the case who would really be at liberty.

The question seems to be begged; “Is being able to do whatever you want freedom and liberty?” Certainly not. What about conservatism and conservation. Certainly not the opposites of liberalism and liberation. To conserve is to take care of what is. And we need to conserve our liberties just as we must our earth. (yes politics really destroys the meanings of these words)

The apparent conclusion to all of this above mish mash is that liberty is being able to exercise our own free will. And we are responsible not to screw up our own liberty, which means we must follow some rules in order to maintain freedom.

Indicators are that most people followed voluntary compliance with social distancing and stay at home and quarantine and masks and the like. Now that is liberty in the exercise of free will. Then they made them laws under penalty. That is not liberty to do what is right. But we still had the liberty to disobey.

Some definitions of liberty make this point; Liberty is the freedom to do what you want without interference. Which brings us to what you want in the exercise of free will.

Choose wisely what you want. I want to be free to do whatever I want. Lucky for me, that what I want fits customs and in general social norms. Do not get me wrong. Socially it is not normal for one in their 60’s to have a ten year old son. While becoming more a norm mixed race couples are still behind the curve. And enjoying brutal hikes and sleeping in the dirt is far from the norm. Driving a 16 year old car might be strange to many and being a house mom might be different for a man. But all in all those are pretty well accepted.

Social diversity. This is just an amazing thing. If it is not a psychotic type, being different is celebrated by many many people. But in the blending we must take care to revere and hold up different cultural nuances and “rules”, “doctrines” and customs. It is incumbent on us not to let our will shape the will of others, other than by example and with compassion and empathy.

I am a lucky writer. It is my extreme pleasure that I have a gift to ask the questions that help you help your self to shape what is your will. Not a teacher, preacher or guide. My will is to stand with or behind and let others lead in their own liberty, at which I am the student. Now those blessings are just dumb luck liberties.

Can you imagine writing a legal “brief” using questions as the arguments? While not easily said it is harder to do. That is my niche. Bringing compassion, empathy and caring into a legal world where this is too often missing. Or maybe it should be missing. Too much compassion for a downright nasty no good bully of a wife beater maybe he should not have compassion from society? Big question. Was his free will battered out of him as a child. Is he not at liberty by himself to exercise the will to be gentle? Yet with help he can be cured. So was he at liberty to seek help. Those who would help him would get a blessing from the no good rotten bastard and from those around him. Most of the time “Anger management” is not just a catch phrase but truly works. But then sometimes bad folk choose to be bad, and all hope is lost until a catharsis. Liberty gets tricky in these areas.

Certainly as a society we must take liberty to take away liberty from those who would take away ours. There is only one way that this can be done properly.

Love thy enemy, love your God, love your neighbor, love the least of these, love nature and love the technology that threatens that. Easy peasy to exercise our liberty to hate and/or not care. Apathy, the opposite of love, means we choose not to fulfill our duty to exercise that free will. Yes it is a responsibility to act and think when it comes to liberty. We are not at liberty to avoid asking and answering questions for ourselves. That would be the opposite of cherishing, nurturing and stewardship of this gift we have been given by those who would stand up for our freedoms.

Is a freed slave all the sudden to be liberated? I think not, much like a prisoner of years. The cage remains in their psyche. A brand new notion of free will thrown at them without a user’s manual. The chains that bind are not only physical and in fact mostly mental and emotional. Learning to love is the only sure cure for this inflicted malady.

If it is our want to express and act upon our free will in love, then no law do we break and we do not take another’s. Teachers, preachers and “strict” parents fall upon the sword of “do as I say not as I do”. Clearly something is forcing them to not exercise the liberty that is love. The most freeing thing in the world is love. The shackles of envy, hate, anger and apathy are shed.

Abraham Lincoln said to effect “The greatest freedom is obedience to the law.” I believe he was referring as much to God’s law as man’s law. Now I say throw in the love factor and you have this tenfold.

In our great Liberty we can see the will we should choose most clearly if we look. There is no great law that binds us if we choose not to follow it. And indeed there are laws that we should not follow as long as the great medical creed goes “do no harm.” If we do no harm and we “do” in love we are as free as can be. We are at a state and grace of Liberty. I have free will. I will do as I want. Just so happens that, to this reformed no good, I choose to love. I have no idea how that came to pass. Except maybe because you all were at liberty and chose to love me.