What is freedom?
Today I’m teaching an online class about “freedom,” and it is difficult to define! Not that the dictionary doesn’t exist, but for a concept like freedom, a definition falls so short.
I love to paint a picture of freedom, and let it sit in the student’s minds, and pray that the beauty of the concept seeps into their hearts.
However, I think I found something that has enlightened my heart on the idea of freedom as I was reading. I am reading a fairly dry history of Poland filled with names and dates of bygone eras—but every so often a little story breathes life into the dry data.
Buried in mountains of information on the structure of the 1500’s Polish Sejm (their legislature), I found a small reference to a sermon given by a Sejm chaplain over 400 years ago. His theme was on the nature of freedom and gives the elements of three good freedoms, and a forth kind of freedom that is a “Satanic freedom.” I think it is brilliant, let me explain.
Piotr Skarga (1536-1612) was a professor and best selling author. He also became Chaplain in the court of Zygmunt III. In 1597, he preached a series of eight sermons before the Sejm of that year in the capital of Warsaw. He argued that there are 4 freedoms, 3 good, and 1 evil.
Three Good Freedoms
Good Freedom #1: Christian Freedom
The first good freedom that Skarga talks about is foundational to the Christian religion: the Gospel’s proclamation that the son of God has died to free you from the tyranny of sin.
Scripture says “the wages of sin is death” but it continues “the gift of God is eternal life.” In other words, to a Christian, the power of the love of God breaks the chains of sin. Instead of being condemned to live enslaved to our appetites, by his grace, we now can refrain from sin. Perhaps more importantly—instead of getting the wages of our sins that we have earned by our missing the mark in big and small ways, we are freely given the gift of eternal life. Wow.
Good Freedom #2: National Freedom
An example is the ancient Greeks who often were content to have their own dictator at home in places like Athens, Spara, or Corinth, but if a Persian wanted to rule over them, they would band together to fight for their national freedom. Maybe my favorite example is from the iconic poem: The Iliad where Hector fights to keep Troy free. He is the underdog, but will stand against the invaders alone if needed. The scene when he armors up and says goodbye to his wife and son is among the most powerful moments in all of literature.
Good Freedom #3: Personal Freedom
This freedom says “no” to tyrants and draws a line in the sand that protects regular people. I love the bravery of people like Nathan Hale, Betsy Ross, and John Adams who—like many in the American Revolution—embraced the idea of human rights as the basis of building a country.
This kind of freedom in a properly ordered society is—to me—the reason for all of us to treasure the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for ourselves and others.
The Dark Side of Freedom
He said that there are three good freedoms:
- Freedom to refrain from sin
- Freedom to decline a foreign master
- Freedom to resist a tyrant
But a fourth freedom, a “devilish,” a “hellish,” a “Satanic” freedom, is “to live without law.”
This is not just a Christian, or modern, or Western concept. As you may know, I love those primordial and ancient human tales. Stories that now exist in faerie tales, ancient poems, and myths largely lost to time. In the surviving stories that come to us from the every ancient civilizations one of the greatest evils is the evil of chaos. Chaos is each person taking life from whomever they can, taking what they wish, and disregarding the structures that make living with other people possible.
From Fenrir the lone wolf (Norse) to Apophis the world-devouring serpent (Egyptian), from Typhon the storm giant (Greek) to Yamata no Orochi the eight-headed dragon (Japanese), from Tiamat the sea serpent (Mesopotamian) to the faceless Hundun (Chinese), from Koschei the Deathless skelton (Slavic) to Skinwalkers (Navajo), and even a demon within the human soul as Mara (Buddhist)—civilizations across the world warn that unbridled freedom is dangerous. This chaotic freedom dissolves individuals and communities into disorder and destruction.
- Freedom to love your wife is beautiful; freedom to sexually exploit someone is not.
- Freedom to own a house that you can customize to fit your needs is beautiful; freedom to own other people is not.
- Freedom to get a job no matter your skin color is beautiful, freedom to hate someone for their skin color is not.
What I am trying to get at is that there is a perverted form of freedom, and each of us should guard ourselves and our actions from believing that freedom includes evil and chaos.
So, what is freedom?
Freedom enables the best living and thriving both as a person and in community with others. However, when we use freedom as a licence to commit atrocities, destroy communities, or undermine healthy order, it becomes a faceless demonic shape-shifting giant wolf wyrm skeleton. In short: Chaos.
As humans we know that community requires constraint, but we also need freedom for things like art, literature, and music to thrive (let alone entrepreneurship, science, and law). We need enough order and societal cohesion so that real people can live, love, and develop as friends and families, as well as crafters and keepers of land and animals. How to find this difficult ballance? It is not easy. But if we take seriously the words of a 400-year-old chaplain—who first set me thinking on this—we might yet learn to embrace the good freedoms and avoid the chaos. The aim is not totalitarian conformity, but a society in which wildly different people can flourish—not by erasing their differences, but by ordering them toward mutual respect.
What is freedom? It is not a definition; it is a picture of a community that respects and honors individuals.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Jeremiah’s Substack and is republished here with permission. Visit his Substack to read more of his work and subscribe for updates.
