FREEDOM

Just like the air we breathe without thinking about it, we embrace "freedom" when spoken of in terms of economics, political governance, and religion, when none of these can ever really set us free or embody freedom. Even the talk of freedom in these terms ends up creating a devastating scenario for us all.

Our alienation from our creator and all the things that we grab that he has not given become harder for us to recognize.

Just like the Israelites asking for a king so they could be like the other nations, ended up giving themselves over to others for the things that can only be found in God. After awhile they so easily forgot that God had told them that this was not what he had planned for them. It was devastating than and it is devastating now.

Things that are actually burdens no longer seem like burdens. They run so quietly within us we don't even recognize the danger of it all. We even justify them away and think they actually make rational sense. This condition continues at that point to deepen our alienation and we live unaware of what is happening because the effects of the blending of religion, politics, and economics make us feel better. But better is not free.

This is a little from The Ethics of Freedom:

"Since all social forces make a bid for totality and try to become totalitarian, they all necessarily take on a spiritual meaning and value. The thing does not remain a thing. It has to have a value. It has to be invested with justice and authority. It has to represent meaning in a world without meaning. It can not in effect be universal unless it ceases to be itself in order to be more than itself by taking on spiritual significance. The state has to be more than an administrative and political mechanism. It has to represent God on earth. Technology has to be more than the assembly of means to achieve utilitarian results. It has to be the privileged expression of man's demiurgic vocation. Money has to be more than a useful instrument for measuring value. It has to be mammon---an idol which satisfies all human needs. We have here a development which is by no means accidental or accessory. It can be observed as a general rule, so that we are justified in speaking of a kind of internal necessity."