From the larger cultural picture of Christianity, we step down to the more individual aspects of the faith. Supposedly, Christianity limits personal growth and potential because it constrains our freedom to choose our own beliefs and practices. Immanuel Kant defined an enlightened human being as one who trusts his or her own power of thinking rather than authority or tradition. Our culture has a deep current of resistance to authority in moral matters. Freedom to determine our own moral standards is deemed necessary for healthy personhood.

Yes, that is an oversimplification. I only have a short space to deal with this. The idea of Christianity as an intellectual and emotional straitjacket is also an oversimplification. Freedom cannot be defined in strictly negative terms. It is not merely the absence of confinement and constraint. In fact, confinement and constraint may at times be a means to liberation.

My daughter is a dancer. She has spent years practicing, practicing and practicing to get good at what she does. This is a restriction of her freedom. It takes time away from activities in which she might otherwise wish to participate. She had natural talent before the lessons, so why spend so much time honing her craft? Well, last semester a role in the school play Grease became unexpectedly available, but whomever stepped into this vacated role had to be a good dancer because they had only three weeks to learn to jitterbug. The lead playing Danny requested Bri, a mere freshman, to take the role because, as a ballet dancer himself, he recognized that she had the honed skills that would allow her to quickly learn the moves of a dance genre she had never before learned. There were girls in the supporting cast who dearly would have loved to play ChaCha, but all recognized as opening night rolled around that Bri had the skills to do so on short notice. Her restriction of freedom in pursuit of her craft allowed her a greater liberality of roles.

In many areas of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the liberating ones. By this I mean the restrictions that fit with the reality of our nature and the world to produce greater power and scope for our abilities. Experimentation and risk bring growth only if, over time, they show us our limits as well as our abilities. If we grow intellectually, vocationally and physically through judicious constraints why should we also not grow spiritually and morally through the same means? Instead of insisting upon freedom to create our own spiritual reality, should we be seeking to discover what true spiritual reality is and disciplining ourselves to live according to that reality?

The popular concept that belief in the spiritual realm is nothing like the rest of reality and therefore we should be free to determine our own morality fails because reality does exist on the spiritual plane and we must acknowledge that reality in order to thrive. For example, love is the most liberating freedom-loss of all. You must lose independence to attain greater intimacy in a love relationship.  You cannot enter into a deep relationship and still make unilateral decisions or allow your lover no say in how you live your life. To experience the joy and freedom of love, you must give up your personal autonomy. I know people who would disagree with that, but I would note that the majority of them have been married and divorced multiple times. Similarly, a relationship with God seems inherently dehumanizing because God says “there is one way, it is My way, you must adjust to My reality.” Yet, God adjusted to our reality in a most radical way when He took on human flesh and died for our sins. God became a limited human being, vulnerable to suffering and death. He adjusted to us for our sakes.

CS Lewis asked the question “Is it easy to love God?” and answered “It is easy for those who do it.” When you fall in love, you want to please your beloved. Your efforts to please that person may seem oppressive to those on the outside of the relationship, but to you, it doesn’t feel oppressive at all. It feels like you’re feeding the relationship and making it stronger. For the Christian, it is the same with Jesus. The love of Christ constrains us to please Him. Jesus changed His very nature for us, even dying for us, so why would we be afraid to give up our freedom in order to fully love Him? It is through that love that we experience true freedom.

Freedom is not the absence of limitations and constraints, but the discovery of those freedoms and restraints that best fit our nature and liberate us to be all that we can be. Christianity gives Christians a framework for defining our natures and being the best people that we can be within the restraints and freedoms afforded by the Christian framework. Rather than being a straitjacket for our individual emotional, intellectual and spiritual growth, Christianity serves as a channel for disciplined emotional, intellectual and spiritual growth.

Is a belief in absolute truth the enemy of freedom?

Christianity names some beliefs “heresy” and some practices “immoral”, therefore barring from its community those who transgress its doctrinal and moral boundaries. That would appear to endanger civil freedom, dividing rather than uniting the population. It is culturally narrow, failing to recognize that diverse cultures will hold different perspectives on reality. Observers reason that Christians are enslaved to a belief system that tells them who they are and how to live, denying individuality, creativity, and emotional and spiritual growth. Emma Goldman, an early 20^th-century social activist, called Christianity “the leveler of the human race, the breaker of man’s will to dare and to do … an iron net, a straitjacket which does not let him expand or grow.” (Goldman, The Failure of Christianity, 1913, Goldman’s Mother Earth Journal)

To many people “true” freedom is liberty to create your own meaning and purpose. In that view, Christianity appears an enemy to social cohesion, cultural adaptability and authentic personhood. Its truth claims sound suspiciously like power plays, attempts to control others and get power for yourself.  Of course, that suspicion in itself is a power play. CS Lewis explained that quite nicely in The Abolition of Man. Some kind of truth-claim is inevitable and unavoidable.  To make any sort of moral judgment in the absence of an objective standard of morality is inconsistent, yet we do it all the time. We state the Chinese are violating human rights, but who defines human rights for the entire human race? The West? China? China sees our call for the protection of human rights interference in their governmental sovereignty and therefore a violation of human rights. They want to know why our definition of human rights should apply to them, but not theirs to us. Truth claims are untenable in a world without objective standards for morality, yet we all recognize certain truth claims as “right”. For the postmodern thinker, such questions inevitably lead to an inability to judge reality on any sort of objective basis. CS Lewis noted that the transparency of a window is a good thing, because it allows us to see the garden beyond, but if we also insist upon looking “through” the garden, then we find the world to be invisible and ultimately completely unknowable. To insist upon “seeing through” everything means to see nothing.

Christianity requires particular beliefs in order to be a member of its community. Critics argue that such exclusivity is socially divisive. They point to diverse ethnic neighborhoods where members respect one another’s privacy and rights and participate in a “liberal democracy” without any common moral beliefs and say this is proof that common moral beliefs are not necessary.

Liberal democracy is based upon an extensive list of assumptions – a preference for individual to community rights, a division between private and public morality, and that sanctity of personal choice. Many other cultures find such ideas utterly foreign. Communities (whether a liberal democracy or some other form of governance) share a common set of very particular beliefs. Western society is based upon a shared commitment to reason, rights and justice, even though we may have no universal definition for these. Yet, we must be honest and recognize that other cultures do not share this same commitment. Therefore, a completely inclusive community is an illusion. Beliefs create boundaries within every human community, including some people and excluding others.

Don’t believe that? What would happen if the board member of the local Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Community Center announced he had become a Christian and now believed that homosexuality is a sin. Trust me, he would be asked to step down from the board because he no longer shares a common commitment with the rest of the organization. No one would find that odd and most if not all members of the homosexual community would applaud their actions as protecting the integrity of their organization. Yet, when a church insists that an actively homosexual person cannot be a Sunday School teacher or pastor, that is labeled “exclusive” and deemed harmful to society. Neither community is being “narrow” – they are just protecting the specific boundaries of their community. One aspect of community is that we hold members of that community accountable for specific beliefs and practices that define our corporate identity. Standards for members do not define the openness of a community so much as the way that that community treats those outside of their circle.  We should criticize Christians when they ungraciously condemn unbelievers in unfair and cruel ways, yet why do we not complain when the local GLTC group excludes vocal homophobes from their meetings? We should not criticize churches when they maintain standards for membership in accord with their beliefs. Every community must and generally does do the same.

As for the charge that Christianity is a cultural straitjacket, a quick look around the world will put this lie to the rest. Christianity has been more adaptive of diverse cultures than secularism and many other worldviews.

Islam remains centered in the place of its origin – the Middle East. The historical lands of Hinduism and Buddhism remain India and China/Southeast Asia. Christianity was first dominated by Jews and centered in Jerusalem, then it was dominated by Hellenists and centered in the Mediterranean. Later the center shifted to Northern Europe and the United States. Today, most Christians in the world live in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Christians comprised 9 percent of the African population in 1900 when they were outnumbers four to one by Muslims.  Today, Christians comprise 44 percent of the population and passed Muslims in number in the 1960s.  Africans have a strong traditional belief in the supernatural that secularism has failed to address. Christianity allows them to critique their traditions without completely rejecting them as Islam had demanded they do.

Cultural diversity is built into the Christian faith. In Acts 15, the Jerusalem church declared that the new Gentile Christians did not have to enter Jewish culture in order to have full standing before God. No one owns the Christian faith for there is no Christian culture in the same manner as there is an Islamic culture that you may find in any Islamic country you visit. Chinese Christians look and act, even worship, in significantly different ways from African Christians who look, act and worship in significantly different ways than South American Christians, and all diverge from European Christianity. Christianity is not a “Western” religion that destroys local cultures. It has taken on more culturally diverse forms than any other faith, gathering deep layers of insight from Hebrew, Greek and European cultures of the past and now being further shaped by African, Latin American and Asian cultures of today.

The false accusation that Christianity is a cultural straitjacket has been laid to rest by the example of its diversity throughout the world’s cultures. Christians bring Christianity into their culture; critiquing their culture through the lens of Christianity, but ultimately keeping those aspects of their culture that work within a framework of Christianity.  Rather than being destructive of ethnic cultures, Christianity has proved to be remarkably adaptable to native cultures.

The world we inhabit is evil and cruel, filled with suffering and despair. Some find unjust suffering a philosophical argument against the very existence of God. Many refuse to trust or believe in any god who allows history and life to proceed as it has. Philosopher J.L. Mackie postulated that a good and powerful God would not allow pointless evil, therefore, the traditional Biblical God could not exist.

Of course, since we’re speaking of logic here, I must point out that just because some kinds of suffering seem pointless to me doesn’t mean that all suffering is pointless or that all people will view it as pointless. It would be fallacious to assert that because I view something as pointless it is therefore pointless. I think carnival rides are pointless. My 9-year-old son and 45-year-old husband would disagree. Just because you can’t  imagine a good reason why God might allow something to happen doesn’t mean there can’t be one. The assumption that good reasons for evil are something we can easily recognize is a faith assumption. The existence of evil is not an argument against God’s existence.

CS Lewis originally rejected the idea of God because of the cruelty of life. Then he came to realize that evil was even more problematic for the atheist. Suffering provided a better argument for God’s existence than against it. He honestly asked himself where he got the idea of “just” and “unjust”. What in the world was he using for a frame of reference in a cruel universe? Was it merely a private idea, something to do with his inner fantasies? He rejected that for an option. We are told people ought not to suffer, die, be mistreated, go hungry, but evolution requires those very inequalities in order to work. On what basis, then, does the atheist judge the natural world as horribly wrong? Without God, there is not objective standard to make such a judgment. The secular way of looking at the world provides no moral framework whatsoever. Wickedness cannot be ascribed in a natural system. The problem of evil and suffering are problems for everyone, whether we are believers or nonbelievers. Abandoning a belief in God does not somehow make the problem of evil easier to handle.

God, through Jesus, experienced the greatest depth of pain and suffering. Christianity does not claim that belief in God will avoid pain. It claims that God will provide great resources to face suffering with hope and courage rather than bitterness and despair.  We see in the cross Jesus facing overwhelming pain and separation from the Godhead. It is important to remember that Jesus is God, Who chose to step down into human existence as one of us. I don’t think we humans can fully appreciate what that meant to Him. The transcendent sinless God chose to become a man and to bear the sins of His fellow human beings. In doing so, He faced the separation from God that every soul who labors under sin must face. Clearly, He accepted this suffering because He loves us. God loves us enough to die a horrible death separated from Himself on our behalf. We cannot say that He allows suffering because He does not care for us. He proved His care while on the cross when He took on our suffering for us.

Please remember, though, that Christianity teaches that the suffering of this world is a temporary condition. In heaven, there will be no pain – not even the memory of pain. The pathway to that painfree future is the incarnation and suffering of God. The doctrine of the resurrection instills Christians with a powerful hope for it promises that we will get the life we most long for and it will be so much better than anything we can even imagine!

Suffering is a pathway to peace and strength. When God finally vanquished pain and evil, it will be so utterly defeated that we will not even remember its existence. The Christian’s future life is one of infinite joy in which we will not even have the memory of suffering.