Freedom vs. Happiness?

Lorne Gunter: Freedom isn't failing us — we're unhappy because we're no longer free. A great read that puts the smaller battles into perspective.

Both groups (and Prof. Gorton, too) make a common mistake, though: They equate choice with freedom. The two are not one and the same.

It's entirely likely that as the range of our choices has expanded in the past five decades, along with our ability to afford those choices, we have become less politically happy because our core freedoms have been undermined by a growing, rapacious state...

... Some of these may be good ideas on their own, but it is the added element of state compulsion that makes doing the sensible thing a freedom-robbing affront.

The way I see it, we have to take yet another step back. Gunter quotes Benjamin Disraeli as having said that "an Englishman did not need a lot of laws because he was prepared to do the proper thing of his own accord." I think this is instructive in another sense than Gunter takes from it.

Freedom is not itself an end; it is a means to an end. If we don't understand what freedom is for, why should we be concerned about giving it up? I wonder whether people are so quick to allow themselves to be put under the dominion of the state because they are incapable of handling freedom. Could it be that the citizen's apathetic shirking of responsibility is the most to blame for the state's gathering of more and more power?

The Apostle Paul wrote:

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. (Galatians 5:1)

But that is not the end of the story.

You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. (vs. 13)

So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. (vs. 16-18)

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.(vs. 22-23)