Moving with the Grain of the Universe: Freedom
In summarizing the political views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Professor William E. Connolly notes:
A person is free when he is the author of the principles he follows. For then the constraints he faces are self-imposed and his purposes are self-defined. [Political Theory & Modernity, Basil Blackwell, 1989]
Rousseau seems to have hit upon a great truth here, though he apparently went on to use this as the foundation of his view of civic society as a self-organizing totalitarian entity. So, I’ll take Rousseau’s insight and use it to point towards a truth.
We Christians believe that we are called to become Christ-like persons, but I’ll use instead an image of us learning to be like God in His freely chosen role as Creator. We’re children who pick up sticks and rocks to imitate our Father as He goes about His work of creating and shaping this universe. By understanding Creation and by helping to shape it in our lesser ways, we learn the skills of the Creator Himself, we learn to think along with Him. The truths which God is manifesting in Creation become ours and we think along with God, we speak with God, as He tells the stories of our lives and of all Creation.
We become free by sharing in the freedom of the Creator. We share in His work, He is the Author and we’re allowed to hold onto the pen as He moves it. If we think in too strict an analogy to human workers, this makes us seem to be quite insignificant but that isn’t the case. We gain more than can be measured by mortal standards when we are given even the smallest share of the freedom of the Creator, freedom limited only by His own promises.
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