In the 80s, Thomas Sowell, a libertarian economist, wrote a book called “A Conflict of Visions.” In it, he set about to divide political thought into that concerned with means and that concerned with ends.

Among other things, Sowell speaks of the means-based approach as consisting of the beliefs that:

- Freedom is being free from coercion and external control.
- Freedom involves having social processes that do not legally limit one’s actions.
- Entitlement contradicts free choice.
- Individualism means having free choice among opportunities, rewards and penalties.
- Rights serve to protect the domains within which people are free to make choices.

By contrast, he describes the ends-based perspective on these matters as being that:

- Freedom is being free to accomplish specific aims.
- Freedom consists of the ability to achieve one’s goals.
- Entitlement and free choice are twin applications of similar democratic principles.
- Individualism means having the right to provide input into the decision making of the powerful.
- Rights allow the government to expand and create those social results to which people are morally entitled.

Each of our own individual visions of how the world operates, says Sowell, exist somewhere between these two poles. Problems happen, he says, when someone with an ideology close to one extreme engages someone else who’s close to the other. This conflict of visions is compounded, says Sowell, by the very language each person uses to describe their reality. When we find ourselves in such situations, we tend to speak past the other, misinterpreting the meaning and rationale of their position. And they’re likely to do the same in engaging us.

Actually what is a straight jacket is religion, self and sin. Those things bind us and hold us down from what God actually intended as a relationship full of freedom. We clothed ourselves with a jacket at Eden and tried our best to loosen the buckles with everything except a true relationship with God. Once Christ came he waits (he stands at the door) for us to ask him to break us free of the bondage. Once we accept his help (salvation) not only does he loosen and unbuckle but he also destroys the jacket.

“The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. Subjectivism about values is eternally incompatible with democracy. We and our rulers are of one kind only so long as we are subject to one law. But if there is no Law of Nature, the ethos of any society is the creation of its rulers, educators and conditioners; and every creator stands above and outside his own creation.”
—C. S. Lewis, Christian Reflections

I just love CS Lewis…anywho…

If we are not careful our search for “freedom” becomes something that we are slave to. Wordly freedom I don’t believe exists. A simple speeding ticket proves that. Our prison’s are full of people that thought they were “free” to do whatever they wanted. They were searching for worldly freedom. Something that was selfish and personal.

Freedom comes at a cost. Ultimately Christ died so that we could be freed from the curse of sin. So that means we are free eternally. Freedom on earth can not exist when sin is still here. There will be a day when we can worship in spirit and truth freely. Once again though that is heavenly.

To me, freedom is being able to do whatever I want, however I want, whenever I want. Obviously, then, no one in this world is free. Why is that? I think it is because of sin. Sin wants what it can’t (or shouldn’t) have. So I either “lust” for something I can never really get, or I get something I shouldn’t have and then I face the consequences.

It seems to me, the only way to be free is to be changed from the inside out. In his book “Xenocide,” Orsen Scott Card wrote, “the only way to get a human to stop doing something is to get the human to stop wanting to do it.” Desire seems to be the root of all slavery.

The apostle Paul wrote, “Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.” This is the way to freedom. The Galatians were in bondage because they thought the law would lead to freedom. It only led them back into slavery. But, if we walk in the Spirit, God changes us and makes us desire only good things.

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, etc… Against such there is no law!” If there is no law against these things, and these are the only things I want to do (this is the qualifier), then I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want. That means I am free.