The Path to Freedom: Choosing Good and Rejecting Evil
What Does It Mean to Be Free?
To be free is not to live isolated from everyone and everything, or to be uninfluenced and unconditioned by anything. Freedom is the ability to respond appropriately and constructively to life’s calls. In this, we choose between good and evil. As we grow, we become more aware of these choices. Life is a game of call and response with which we conduct our existence. This response can be constructive or destructive. We are free when, in response to an internal or external call, we choose appropriately, that is, choosing good and rejecting evil.
Learn to Assess and Decide
We must assess the call. For this, we need criteria for appraisal.
- Rules: There are basic rules of society. They are necessary for life because they indicate where we must seek the good and valuable. However, rules are not sufficient for two reasons: there aren’t rules for all situations, and in certain situations, it may be necessary to violate a rule if it leads to a greater good.
- Values: Rules serve values, which are more important. A value is a quality that things or situations possess that makes them attractive to us. We need to internalize values in our conscience and decide accordingly.
Three Paths to the Good
Jesus framed three clues to find the good:
- Love God: To know God as a loving parent of everyone and everything, who is worthy of trust. To take God as the basic orientation of life. To cultivate a relationship with the source of light and power in daily life.
- Love Your Neighbor: To always regard others as children of God and siblings, not as competitors or attackers. To respect their dignity and freedom. To act for their greatest good, according to their needs.
- Love Yourself: To feel loved as a child of God and therefore called to live a life of fullness. To take care of oneself and one’s own needs. To defend one’s dignity in the face of aggression. To develop qualities and capabilities well-received in oneself and others.
The Forces That Enslave Us
Sometimes we may feel subjected to powerful forces and influences that make it seemingly impossible to act according to our conscience. These negative trends can emerge from within, our desires and inclinations leading us to act in ways we don’t want. Other times, negative influences come from outside: social or group pressure forcing us to act in ways we see as negative, or when the way society is organized makes us assume things like inequality, injustice, or violence as normal or unavoidable.
There Is Always a Path Toward Freedom
There is always a way that allows us to choose the good and therefore freely respond to life’s situations. There is always a chance for good, even in the most negative or oppressive situations. The path of freedom is not always the easiest path. Jesus always sought original, narrow paths, and now helps his followers to do likewise.
Stewards of the Gift Received
Christians receive life with gratitude and feel responsible for appreciating the gifts received. This includes:
- Receive: Life is welcomed and appreciated in oneself and others. Christians see human life as a sign of God’s love.
- Know: Life is a constant challenge to human thought. Science calls for an increasingly better understanding of how things function. Philosophy and anthropology raise many questions that require reflection.
- Care: This is to create social conditions that enable everyone to live a decent life.
- Promote: We are called to be fruitful.
- Defend: In many cases, life is threatened.
General Principles
- Do Not Kill: Respect for human life.
- Beyond the Law of Retaliation: We cannot apply it as it triggers violence.
- Seek the best possible conditions in each case for developing human life: We must find the highest quality of life.
- Human life has value in itself; it does not depend on the circumstances in which it develops: Even if diminished or impaired.
- A person is not the absolute master of their life or that of others: We cannot do whatever we want in life.
- Human life begins at conception: When the sperm fertilizes the egg, a new being comes into existence.
- Science and technology must serve the promotion and care for life, avoiding moving human interest and other: To investigate those most beneficial for the integral good.
- Not everything technically possible is morally good: Respect for the worth and dignity of human life imposes limits.
- Human life cannot be manipulated to serve something other than itself: For the value itself.