Mar 17 Mon
Is it possible to have freedom without Truth?
Freedom implies knowledge; ignorance is an obstacle to the capacity to choose. Thus, freedom depends on truth. Even more, freedom makes man more capable of loving the truth and growing in the knowledge of moral values. Truth is not the same as “opinion” or “one’s judgment,” but rather an objective reality.
There are two ways of approaching the future. If we think that we are just material beings, then we could say, "Let's eat and drink, tomorrow we shall die". Our main concern will focus on our well-being or feeling good. After that, we will be living with the frustration of never reaching it.
Or we may face the future knowing that we have been created to control the present time and thus, to avoid death forever.
Ideologies, prevailing over truth, promise a future without anticipating it: just live today and now. They will tell you that happiness lies in freedom: "Freedom will make you true and good".
But where is happiness, in freedom or truth?
Discussing "truth" today raises a fundamental question: which truth—yours or mine?
For centuries man's goal was to know the truth, because "the truth will set you free" (Jn 8:32), an affirmation of Jesus Christ that can perfectly answer Pilate's question: "What is truth" (Jn 18:38).
Ideologies, like Marxism, offer the freedom of choice, "Do one thing today and another tomorrow, hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, raise cattle in the evening, and criticize after dinner, simply what you prefer..." Whatever you like… no duties. They offer us freedom, without truth, only to live in chains.
On the contrary, what Jesus Christ offers us is knowing and loving Him with personal intimacy. Thus, we decide to do so because we want to. And He is the Truth.
There is a fake freedom and the freedom of God's children.
Our freedom will be meaningful only when we know reasonably well what we are going to choose (the truth). The one who sells "hair growers" deceives with a product that has no beneficial effect, except for the one who sells it.
Jesus Christ offered Himself to die on the cross in exchange for nothing. He left the door open and the lights on so that we could know him and remain with Him if we wanted to.
Freedom without truth is not reliable.
But when we choose the truth, it fills our freedom with content (our freedom acquires a direction, it is FOR SOMETHING). After all, we cannot love what we do not know and without knowing, and without loving, we are nothing.
Using our freedom, we become the kind of person we try to be. Somehow, we are our own parents, and give birth to ourselves by our own free choice of what is good. Such a choice becomes possible when we receive God into us and become children of God. Otherwise, we abort ourselves.
What seems even more strange is that possessing the maximum freedom of the children of God, we do not communicate to our society this treasure; rather, it is those who have a poorer and darker vision of the human being who raise this banner of freedom.
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