FREEDOM
The primary principle of Christian ethics and Christian politics must be respect for every person simply as a person. If each man and woman is a child of God, whom God loves and for whom Christ died, then there is in each a worthy absolutely independent of all usefulness to society. Freedom is a great word, and like other great words is often superficially understood. It has been said that to those who have enough of this world’s goods the claim to freedom means “Leave us alone,” while to those who have not enough it means “Give us a chance.” This important difference of interpretation rests on a single understanding of freedom as absence of compulsion or restraint. But if that is all the word means, freedom and futility are likely to be so frequently combined as to seem inseparable. For nothing is so futile as the unhampered satisfaction of sporadic impulses; that is the sort of existence which leads through boredom to…
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