FREEDOM MEANS PUTTING NO BREAKS ON LOVE

Maybe never have people been more preoccupied with freedom than today. In the old times, conversations about freedom were a philosophical theme. For instance, greeks needed a philosophy of freedom to oppose to the furious and tyrannical gods.The greek gods oppressed people. When Prometheus, the humanist god, wanted to bring fire to men, Zeus punished him, tying him to a rock where vultures chopped his leaver.

Religions that deal with freedom of man are very few, only one, actually. When I say “religion”, I propose accuracy of terminology. The Latin term ”religo ” means “ re-tie ” - the reestablishment of the relation between God and man, two persons. For the Eastern the concept of a God-Person is vulgar and unacceptable. The Eastern don’t even hold a God, they hold teachers that preach about “ liberation” . That is why, the eastern obsession of liberation is a philosophy , as that of Greeks or Nietzsche, but not a religion. Muslims who believe in a God – person, celebrate one day a year, during December, called “ the night of prayer” when Allah descends from the 7th sky to the 1st sky to hear their prayers. Muslims’ God never called a man a friend of his, as Jesus did.

Of course, everybody is free to have his own definition of freedom. Surrealist Salvador Dali thought that “ in order to be free you have to be a little bit of a multimillionaire.” For Friedrich Nietzsche , freedom is the power to say “No”.Others say freedom is to have all you want when you want it. On the other hand, a greek saying tells “when gods want to punish somebody, they give him everything he asks for”.

The condition of freedom that Christianity proposes does not assume yoga meditation methos , nor Salvador Dali’s money. “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free”(John 8:32) This is that truth Pilate asked Christ about - “ What is the truth?”, but didn’t wait for the answer, but “ he went out to the Jews”( John 18,38). Pilate , like most of his contemporary and most people, did not understand truth is not a simple philosophical notion, but a reality, even more, a Person .Pilate looked Truth in the face and did not understand.

From the Christian point of view, liberty means not putting any breaks on love , the luxury of laying down one’s soul for his neighbour at any time. Freedom means being able to answer at any time the calling of Christ: “ Take your cross and follow me!” In one word, freedom means nobody can ever blackmail you and for that you need to follow the truth , to love and have patience.

A free man would not sell his freedom for money or women or wine or glory, A free man no longer fears death – his own or that of his loved ones.A free man, in a Christian way, is a posthumous man.

A free man, like Homer’s Ulysses, general of Kefalians (?), if thrown naked in an unknown town , will not get lost, because he wears his virtue as his clothing. He has his entire wealth on himself, carrying it on the back of his heart, like a sneal carries his house. This is such wealth that causes no envy – the Cross of Christ , the burden God carried on the way to Golgotha to set man free from serving sin and death.

Freedom means having no reasons to run away from God.

Translated from Romanian by Diana Apetri