In the modern world, there is a lot of discussion about freedom. Oftentimes, the modern heretics of our age imply that freedom is doing whatever we want. They claim that a man is truly free once his base desires (sex, wealth, fame) are satisfied. An orthodox understanding of freedom (and I’m talking about such orthodox as Socrates, Plato, Augustine, Nyssa, Washington, Jefferson), is that if we do whatever we want, we are certainly not free. I may do whatever I want by making my bedroom into a pig pen, but then I am no longer free to enjoy it as a bedroom. Suddenly the pig is sleeping on my bed and my clothes are covered in mud. Very soon, I shall have neither a pig pen nor a bedroom, only the remains of what used to be a great civilization.

The Christian idea is that freedom is found in the completeness of a thing, in a thing being able to manifest itself to its highest possibilities. A chair is not free to be many more things than a chair. It may be a table, but it will never be a free enough table to host the neighbors, especially if I am to follow the commands of my Lord; to love thy neighbor. But, it is very free to be a chair. It could host a large majority of the neighbors in ways that a table could not. In fact, I hope that table is never free to host the neighbors in the same fashion as a chair… It is a very free chair indeed if it can host both the peasant and the king—if it could be both a dining chair and a throne. Therefore, a thing is free if it is able to serve the good to its highest capacity in whatever place in the hierarchy that it finds itself. The free chair is the chair which moves towards it’s ultimate purpose as a chair; not the chair which fashions itself into a table.

If I recall, our Lord demonstrated this very principle. If we contend that Christ was perfect and that He was perfectly human (and to disagree is to find ourselves in the company of heretics), then that must also mean that He was perfectly human in every aspect of His life. This means that Christ was perfect both as carpenter and as crucified. In this way, the contingencies did not effect His freedom as in every aspect of His life, He fulfilled His telos. He came to bring the kingdom of heaven whether by the swing of His hammer or by the whips of the Roman guard, whether celebrating the binding of marriage vows or the binding of the cross. Freedom is not in fulfilling our lowest will, but in fulfilling our highest—the will of the Father. In this way, Christ came to set the captives free towards the will of the Father. Even while denying His earthly desires at the cost of His life, He remained free.

The artist knows that it is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is contained by the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold and creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe at all and have only succeeded in drawing a deer who has been acquainted with Chernobyl. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars, but you can not free him from his stripes. If you so desire to free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel. Please do not, as the moderns suggest, go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides or the circles may follow suit and we shall no longer have a great use for our malformed tires!

We must remember that man does not transcend the laws of His nature. If he did, he wouldn’t be much of a man. We may, as the moderns suggest we ought to, upload our consciences to the web, but in so doing, we shall lose the frame of our body and end a stranger to our humanity. We may, as the moderns suggest, yield to our desires, but we will find ourselves a slave to them. We may even, as the moderns suggest, love ourselves, but we might find that in loving ourselves, we cannot love anything else but ourselves. Man is contained by his frame for he is the handiwork of The Artist. It is not wise to reach for the brush ourselves or we may find that we are a very poor artist. We might even find ourselves liking the wrong sort of art, the art which is nothing more than a mirror.

Thus, freedom is teleological. We are most free when we move towards purpose. Of course that purpose is framed by contingencies i.e. I cannot build my house while I am in my car. But, while I am in my car, just as when I am building my house, I can move towards purpose. It is when I move towards purpose that I am most free and the contingencies become mere scenery. To be free is to enter into heaven while still being on earth; in which the roar of the lions and the chains of the Romans have ceased to maintain their binding power, of which man is finally able to die a martyr. 

Everything that we do is framed by our contingencies. But, true freedom is bound in the way in which we pursue our telos: our purpose. In pursuing our telos, we find that it doesn’t matter if we’re driving, building a house, eating, or drinking, we can do it all to the glory of God. In fact, we can commune with God even if we are sitting on a chair, whether it is the chair of the peasant or the King.