All in the name of freedom!

We live in a free world. We are born free. But what exactly is freedom? We cannot understand fully what freedom is unless we understand what is man. Man as a creature, like all other creatures, has to submit himself to his Creator. And, as a special creature, he has specific duties and responsibilities.

By endowing man with an intellect and freedom, God has entrusted him not only with the ability to procreate but also with the duty of embellishing and enhancing his creation. "Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth." (Gen.1:28)

When God made us in his own image, "Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness", (Gen. 1:26) and he made us share in his divine life, "... in the divine image he created him," (Gen. 1:27) he entrusted us to share in his plan of creation. No wonder then, that God has endowed man with the gift of freedom. Therefore, it is only, by understanding God's plan of creation and how we fit in his plan that we are then able to understand why we are free and what is freedom.

Pope John Paul II gives us the right meaning of freedom when he states that "freedom consists not in doing what we like but in having the right to do what we ought". And what ought to be done means, in general terms, fulfilling God's plan of creation.

When some of us speak about freedom of thought, freedom of expression and the right to do whatever we deem fit in the name of freedom - even the right to kill as in abortion or the right to die as in euthanasia - we seem to imply that we are the origin of ourselves, that our freedom is absolute.

From the very beginning of man's existence on earth his freedom has been limited and tied down to doing God's will. In the narration of the Bible, when man was put in the garden of Eden to cultivate and care for it, God told him, "You are free to eat from any of the trees of the Garden except the tree of knowledge of good and bad. From that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die." (Gen. 2:16-17)

Once we do not control our freedom and follow our whims and passions, we shall no longer share in God's life and, therefore, yes, we are doomed to die. When commenting about the story of man in the Garden of Eden, Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), explains that "... the dominion granted to man by the Creator is not an absolute power, nor can one speak of a freedom to use and misuse or to dispose of things as one pleases. The limitation imposed from the beginning by the Creator himself and expressed symbolically by the prohibition not to eat of the fruit of the tree shows clearly enough that, when it comes to the natural world, we are subject not only to biological laws but also to moral ones, which cannot be violated with impunity." (Ch.2 Sec. 42:28-29)

Let us, therefore, as human beings, created in God's image and likeness, with a specific mission to promulgate life and enhance God's creation, clarify what we mean when we speak about freedom, for only God is absolutely free for he is the author of life.