For the last few weeks much has been said on the topic of freedom. We have heard about freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of expression. The last few weeks the debate on freedom has gone full tilt. I am not sure if it is because of the proposed Islamic Center in New York, the suggested Koran burning in Florida or the 9th anniversary of the horrible events of September 11, 2001. It seems everyone is talking about freedom.
People came to the new world for freedom. They were leaving England and the Netherlands and other places in Europe and coming to the new world so they could practice their faith unmolested. On June 1, 1660 Mary Dyer was hanged in the Massachusetts colony for being a Quaker. You see it was illegal in the Massachusetts Colony to be a Quaker in 1660. So much for religious freedom. Her statue is the one in front of the Massachusetts State house in Boston.
We Americans have more freedoms than most people that inhabit this world that we live in. For example, the citizens of Great Britain do not share the same freedom of speech that we have, and in some places people are not free to worship the way the feel led or have freedom of the press. America is truly blessed in the sense that we have been given these freedoms. But freedom is not free and come with a great price.
With the freedoms we have been given we also have a moral responsibility to use those freedoms for the common good. St. Paul tells us in the first letter to the Corinthians, “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful for me, but not all things edify.” (1Corinthians 10:23) In other words just because you can do something does not mean you should.
But do we have ultimate freedom? Can we say and do whatever we want whenever we want? The short answer is no. There is an old axiom that I heard somewhere, I wish I could remember where I heard this. It goes something like, my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins. I can swing my first all I want but if I hit you, then I have infringed on your freedom to not have your nose hit. So freedom is not absolute in anyway. Another example, I cannot yell fire in a movie theater, unless of course there is a fire. I can yell it, but there will be consequences if I do. With freedom comes responsibility and this responsibility is great and we need to use it wisely.
Back to St. Paul for a moment. In the quotation I used above, St. Paul is saying that if what I want to do is not helpful or it does not edify then I should not do it. To illustrate the point consider the burning of books. Do I have the right to gather up books and burn them? Yes I do. If I get the proper permits from the town I live in then I may burn the books. But what if my burning of the books causes a riot and people are harmed by my action? Using St. Paul as the example then I should not burn those books because it is not edifying. So you see there is a great responsibility here. Yes I can do it, but I really should not.
If there is one thing that has made this country great that is the freedom of speech. The opposition to an idea is what leads to debate and further education on the issue. The loan voice crying in the wilderness has lead to some of the best ideas that we have today. People have been laying down their lives for this freedom for as long, if not longer, than we have been a country. However the most important part of that freedom is the responsibility that goes along with it.
V. Rev. Fr. Peter Preble is the Pastor of St. Michael’s Orthodox Christian Church in Southbridge. Read more of Fr. Peter’s writings on his blog at http://www.frpeterpreble.com/
Originally published in the October 1. 2010 edition of the Southbridge Evening News
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