Freedom Under God

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Liberty is not the right to do whatever I please, nor is liberty the necessity of doing whatever the dictator dictates; rather liberty is the right to do what I ought. Furthermore, “ought” is intrinsically related to purpose. The best way of finding out why a thing was made is to go to its maker. “Why did God make you?”

Freedom Under God, by Fulton Sheen (Cluny Media, 246 pages)

In order to understand what freedom really is, it is important to avoid the two extreme positions.… One extreme error is that of liberalism for which liberty means the right to say, think, or do anything the individual pleases. Fourth of July orations, political campaigns, the harangues of capitalists and labor organizers, certain graduation addresses, and radicals all sound the clarion call to this kind of liberty. There is one thing common to them all—they all talked as if freedom in this world were an end instead of a means. They pleaded for freedom, but none of them told us why they wanted to be free. They insisted on being free from something, but they forgot that freedom from something implies freedom for something. Freedom from rheumatism is intelligible only because I want to be free to walk. Forget the purpose of freedom, and freedom is absurd. The modern world has been talking about a freedom which forgot why it wanted to be free. It made willing more important than the object willed. This is wrong, because no one wants to be free just to be free, but to be free in order to fulfill a purpose or attain a goal. We want the windshield of our auto to be free from dust in order that we may drive safely. Unfortunately, too many in their pleas for liberty wanted a richer, fuller, and more abundant liberty without ever deciding what they wanted to do with it. Because they forgot the purpose of life, they invented the idea of progress, which is change without purpose. They confused a step forward with a step in the right direction. Instead of working toward an ideal, they changed the ideal and called it progress, forgetting that they can never know whether or not they are making progress unless they have a fixed point. In this sense Chesterton was right when he said, “There is one thing that never makes any progress. That is the idea of progress.”

Such a false freedom created minds who were more interested in the search for truth, than the truth itself; they sought not to find, but to have the thrill of seeking; they knocked not to have the door of truth opened, but to listen to the sound of their knuckles; they asked not to receive the purpose of life, but to hear the tones of their own voices. They loved to talk about the glorious quest for truth, but they were very careful to avoid discovering it. The search for truth carries but few responsibilities and may often be veneered with priggish insincerity, but its discovery is a burden and a challenge which few were willing to face. Herein is the first defect of our decaying liberty—we forgot why we wanted to be free. Until we answer that question, our talk about liberty is but “sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.”

The other extreme error we have to avoid, is the false liberty of Fascism, Nazism, and Soviet Fascism or Communism which says that liberty means obedience to the will of a dictator. Dictators saw that man had to have some ideal or purpose outside himself, but instead of making this purpose the development of human personality, they imposed as a goal, race as in Nazism, the State as in Fascism, and the class as in Communism. A totality thus took the place of personality. This idea is right in insisting that freedom has a purpose, but it is wrong in dictating the wrong purpose; namely, the omnipotent state. Dictatorship is right in giving a goal, but it is wrong in imposing an earthly one instead of a heavenly one, an economic end instead of a spiritual one, a Caesar instead of a God. In the end this means the destruction of freedom of choice of all the citizens of the State, such as the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, freedom of press and assembly. The citizens in Russia and Germany have much the same kind of freedom as two men fighting in a jail. One said to the other: “I want you to know that I have just as much right in the jail as you have.” This new kind of freedom is very much like the freedom of cuckoos in cuckoo clocks. When the time comes for the people to vote one hundred percent behind the dictator, the mechanism of an army, terror, propaganda, and fear of purges, set the electorate in action, as the mechanism sets the cuckoo in action at the appointed hour.

Such a concept of freedom is wrong also because it places freedom in the collectivity instead of in man and identifies freedom with what men do, instead of with what man is. Freedom then becomes the attribute of the State instead of man; on this theory it is the composite which is free, not the components. Each person is like a cog in a machine whose function is wholly determined by the state engineer or the dictator. A man in Russia or Germany, for example, has no more freedom of choice than a piston in an engine. He is free so long as he acts as a piston, but if he asserts that man is more than a piston and is free to choose not to be a piston in the engine of the State, he is purged as a “wrecker.” The term wrecker is significant, for the very fact that a human being is called a “wrecker” is in itself an admission that the State is only a machine and not a moral body made up of human beings each endowed with inalienable rights, the most precious of which is freedom.

Two errors then must be avoided: one which forgets the purpose of freedom, the other which claims that liberty resides only in the collectivity, but not in man. If we avoid these two extreme positions of a dying Liberalism and a growing Dictatorship, we come to the more positive and correct idea of liberty, which avoids the two above errors: Liberty is not the right to do whatever I please, nor is liberty the necessity of doing whatever the dictator dictates; rather liberty is the right to do what I ought. In these three words: “please,” “must,” and “ought” are given the choices facing the modern world. Of the three we choose “ought.”

That little word ought signifies that man is free. Fire must be hot, ice must be cold, but a man ought to be good. “Ought” implies morality; that is, a moral power distinct from a physical power. Freedom is not the power to do anything you please, so often expressed by the modern youth as: “I can do it if I want to, can’t I? Who will stop me?” Certainly you can do anything if you please or want to. You can rob your neighbor, you can beat your wife, you can stuff mattresses with old razor blades, and you can shoot your neighbor’s chickens with a machine gun, but you ought not to do these things because ought implies morality, rights, and duties.

Freedom then is a moral power rather than a physical power, an “ought” instead of a “can.” Furthermore, “ought” is intrinsically related to purpose. When I say, “I ought to eat my dinner,” there is an unmistakable relation between eating and health; namely, the purpose of eating is to conserve my health. When I say: “I ought to study” the word ought involves the purpose of study; namely, the acquisition of knowledge. There are thousands of little “oughts” in every life, each one of which is inseparable from a goal or an end or a purpose, for example, “I ought to pay my bills,” “I ought to be kind.” Reason is constantly setting up little targets of “oughts” or purposes and the will like an arrow tries to hit the mark. Underlying all little “oughts” of life, there is one supreme ought; namely, I ought to attain the end for which I was made. Behind all purposes is one great purpose, which is given in answer to the question: “Why do I exist?” That is a question very few ever ask themselves. They would not have a ten-cent gadget in their homes for five minutes without knowing its purpose, but they will go through life without knowing why they are living. Until we answer that question there is no question worth answering; and the way we answer it determines our character in this world and our destiny in the next.

Why was I made? What ought I to do with my life? Suppose we stopped a number of men on the streets and put to them this question, what answer would we receive? One would probably say: “In order to raise a family”; another: “In order to get rich”; another: “In order to be educated.” But these are only partial answers. The obvious answer is: Man wants to be happy, and raising a family, accumulating a fortune, or being educated, are to him ways of realizing that happiness. Fundamentally, he wants life, he wants truth, he wants love. He does not want life for only the next thirty-two minutes, but always; he does not want to know the truths of geography alone, but all truth; he does not want a love that dies, but an eternal, beautiful ecstatic love. Hence the ridiculousness of modern marriages with their divorces: “I will love you for two years and six months.” Earth does not give such happiness, for when he has raised his family, he hates to leave it; when he has piled up his dollars, he wants a larger pile; and when he has become educated, he begins to feel proud of what he knows and thus lapses into the most abysmal ignorance. Since the happiness of eternal life, truth, and love cannot be realized here below, it follows that their attainment is beyond this life, for if there were no food there would be no stomach; if there were no things to see, there would be no eyes; and if there were no perfect life, truth, and love there would be no mind or will or heart craving and striving for them. Reason thus suggests the purpose of man which is identical with the answer of Revelation. The best way of finding out why a thing was made is to go to its maker. “Why did God make you?” and the Maker gives the answer: “God made me to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him in this world, and to be eternally happy with Him in the next.”

Republished with gracious permission from Cluny Media.

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The featured image is “Natt (Røros kirke)”/”Night, the Church at Røros  (1904) by Harald Sohlberg, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.