On True Freedom: Thoughts on the Virginia Tech Tragedy
God endowed mankind with freedom even though He knew that
mankind would use that freedom to estrange itself from Him, even though He knew
that the Jews and the Roman authorities would gather together to afflict,
crucify and kill His Only-Begotten Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. God gave us freedom to choose Him on our own,
even though He knew mankind would so often choose to move far away from
Him. Freedom was endowed upon us and in
us, because somehow it reflects something that is in God Himself. Our freedom reflects a divine attribute and it
is part of what makes us to be created in the image and likeness of God. We can spend a lifetime contemplating the
knowledge that God gave us freedom foreseeing that we would use it against
Him. We can spend another lifetime
contemplating the mystery that God Himself paid the price for endowing us with
freedom. He paid it with the blood of
His own Son born in the flesh and crucified upon the Cross. Is it a wonder then, that in the "Land of the
Free" we encounter the same destructive choices that mankind has made from the
beginning of its creation. Adam and Eve
used their freedom to disobey God. Cain
used his freedom to kill his brother Abel.
The nation of Israel used its freedom to make itself a graven image, an
idol, in the desert. Herod used his
freedom to slay innocent babies and children in order to hunt down and kill the
baby Jesus. The Jews and the Romans used
their freedom to destroy the Son of God born in the flesh. So many of the Roman Emperors used their
freedom to persecute and kill the Christians.
And so on throughout the history of mankind. Is it a wonder then, in a country whose
founding principles include that of freedom for all mankind, that it should be,
and its citizens should be, the victims of mankind's terrible use of its
freedom to choose either the bad or the good?
In the events of the Virginia Tech massacre, we see the price of
freedom. It was once and for all time
the blood of God, it has been the blood of the martyrs, and more recently it is
the blood of college kids and professors, who were the victims of an enslaved
heart, mind and soul. But herein lies
the mystery: God knew what Cho Seung-Hui
would do, and He allowed him the freedom to choose to do it. Does that make our God a cruel God? To the contrary, a tragedy of this nature
reveals the immeasurable love of God, Who despite this killer's grievous use of
freedom, gave him life, loved him, and died for him. God does not take away our freedom to choose
because we make bad choices or because we sin horribly. Rather, He continues to grant us the power to
come to Him by our own choice rather than by coercion. He continues to endow us with freedom.God
will take away no one's freedom to choose Him as a result of this tragedy. While the various political parties and
lobbyists vie for the upper hand in advancing their agendas as a result of this
tragedy, and while we hope and pray for a peaceful church, society, nation and
world at every Orthodox service, we Orthodox Christians must see and understand
the difference between the freedoms that most of us talk about and the freedom
that God Himself has given us. The
freedom that God has given us is the freedom to choose Christ, to choose the
path of light, to choose salvation over damnation, to choose light over
darkness, to choose good over evil. The
freedom that God has given us is to choose words that are godly, not simply to
say anything we want. The freedom that
God has given us is to choose to love our enemies, not slaughter them and war
against them. The freedom God has given
us is to pray for those who hate us, not use another's hatred as a pretense for
our own. God did not give us freedom to
choose our own morality. He gave us the
freedom to choose to follow and obey His commandments.Freedom and freedoms are
not given by mankind. Freedom is not a
right. Freedom is a divine gift. It is what makes us most human. But freedom only makes us human to the extent
we use it according to the teachings and precepts of God. We see in the actions of Cho Seung-Hui what
happens when we choose to use the freedom God has given us in a most
destructive and horrifying way. We
become INHUMAN. We are only truly free,
only truly human, when we choose God and the path of His salvation. The popular culture in America tells us that
we are free only when we can do anything we want. Adam and Eve found out, and so did we as a
result, that when we choose something other than God, when we choose something
other than His commandments, that we become slaves. Adam and Eve and all mankind became enslaved
to death as a result of their free choice.
Make no mistake, dearly beloved, the Orthodox Christian "take" on freedom
is not the same as the popular culture's "take" on freedom. What we hear mostly
in this day and age from young and old alike, from pastors and political
pundits is "This is a free country right?
I can, therefore, say and do whatever I want because that is my RIGHT." We Orthodox Christians should answer, it is
certainly not your right to say and do whatever you want, because it is not
America that has made you free, it is God Himself. God has created us with freedom instilled in
us, given to us as a gift. We have not
been made free by any human authority; not by our Declaration of Independence,
not by the Preamble to the Constitution, not by the Bill of Rights, not by the
Constitution itself. All of these
documents recognize according to our Founding Fathers that it is God Himself
who has made us this way. Our country's
Founding Fathers tried to express this in the most lofty and inspiring terms,
and many men and women have died fighting because they believed what all these
documents simply recognized. We
Christians would argue that freedom is not a right, but a gift.God created us
free. He made us this way knowing we
would crucify His Son and knowing that the shooting and killing at Virginia
Tech would take place. If we are truly
to remain the Land of the Free, it must be we Christians who are brave enough
to help our country remember what true freedom is and how great a people can be
when they freely choose the path of Christ.
If this country of ours is to remain free and if its citizens desire to
remain free, truly free, then each of us must use our freedom to choose Christ
and His path of salvation. All other
paths lead this country and its people toward destruction, not toward God but
away and far away from Him. We
Christians instead of talking all the time about political freedoms, must turn
the minds and hearts of our country's people toward the freedom given us by
God. Instead of engaging our country on
the level of its political debates about freedoms, we must engage it on the
level of humanity's freedom in Christ.
Otherwise our free country will continue to be enslaved to its own
reasoning and spiral downwards into darkness, away from the light of
Christ.This was no more clearly evident than in the TV networks' insistence on
running the disturbing images of Cho's video over and over again on their news
programs. In order to stop that downward
spiral into darkness a parent of one of the slain college children spoke out
saying, "I want to issue a direct personal plea, to all the major media: For the love of God and our children, stop
broadcasting those images and those words.
Choose to focus on life and the love and the light that our children
brought into the world and not on the darkness and the madness and the
death." The operative word in this
father's plea was "Choose". It is the
freedom to choose. Whether this father
knew it or not, I believe that from his mouth came some of the most profound
words in human history. Some in the
United States would argue that what he asked for was the restriction of free
speech. But this father's plea came from
a more basic and deeper reality, one which makes us truly free, truly human,
and one which brings us out of darkness and into the light. This father, whether he knew it or not, was
asking the TV networks to let the light of Christ shine in their use of
freedom. The result of his plea, really
it was a prayer, and God heard it, was not the restriction of speech, but its
freedom in Christ. As each of us considers and many continue to be impacted by
the tragic events which occurred on the Virginia Tech campus, let us remember
that we were created by God with freedom.
That freedom was purchased with His own blood in the crucifixion of His
own Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Yes we do live in the "Land of the Free", but true freedom is not the
ability to do and say anything we want.
We are truly free when we choose Christ and to follow His
commandments. God did not make us
robots, implanted with a program to control our behavior. Rather, He made us reason-endowed creatures,
capable of thinking and expressing ourselves, capable of choosing, or not
choosing, Him. He made us this way so
that we would have the opportunity, the blessing, of a full life in Christ, a
full life that was freely chosen by us.
That makes us truly free, when we can even choose not to follow
God. No human authority, no document has
made us this way. God has created us
this way. It is what makes us most
human. It is part of being made in God's
image and likeness. For the sake of our
country, its people, the world, and our own salvation, we need to exercise our
freedom in such a way that shows us to be truly human, to be truly free in
Christ.
- Fr. Stephen Loposky
