Faith And Freedom

For a long time I thought that the concept of faith was incompatible with the concept of freedom. I identified religion with oppression. However I ended up finding out that faith really does set you free in a number of meaningful ways.

One of these ways is that it sets you free from resentments and grudges. I used to think that an injustice unavenged is an injustice institutionalized; however I ended up finding out that grudges hurt both oneself and other people. I ended up finding out that forgiveness really is liberating. It gives a soaring sense of freedom in which the attention is liberated from the source of the problem and is freed for more meaningful things.

Another is freedom from sin and its exploiters. Sin has a way of drawing people in, and ill-intentioned people will use your sins – real or perceived - to control you, abuse you or get from you what they have no right to want. We see this done by criminal organizations, abusive partners, what have you. Being freed from sin frees oneself from exploiters of sin. It also frees you from your own bad habits. You are given a moral structure with which to overcome both sin in oneself and wrongful claims and abuse by others. You are given a strong moral grounding in face of exploiters of sin. And that is a very important freedom to have.

A related freedom is freedom from one's past. We have many people equating others with whatever flaws they see in them and failing to see their virtues. We have many people treating others based on the worst thing they've ever done without acknowledging the good things that they have done. Faith frees you from that. It tells you that you can choose how you behave, whatever your behavior has been previously. And that is very liberating indeed.

Faith also frees you from wrongful beliefs and wrongful attitudes. Many beliefs out there are very wrong. If you are living under something like Communism or personality psychology, you are likely to be under severe oppression. Whereas faith takes apart these wrongful beliefs and instead gives you a much more valid moral structure – one that is less likely to lead to torture chambers or lifelong demonization.

Probably most important, faith frees your will and gives you the right to free choice. We see in psychology many theories that see people as basically animals or machines. We see in psychology theories that tell us that some people are evil and can only be evil whatever they do. Faith frees one completely from this cruelty and irrationality. Faith gives you the right to choose rightful conduct whatever your psychology happens to be. Faith takes you out of animalistic dynamics and makes you a human being. And that is the most important freedom of all.

And then of course faith also gives you freedom from whatever corruption is around you by putting you in contact with a greater power than theirs.

So these are the main ways in which faith sets you free. And I hope that more people discover this – for their own benefit and for that of others.