Tag: freedom

Beautiful snow-capped mountain peaks jut into a glorious blue sky. Climbers, dark silhouettes in the clear air, make their way up a ridge on their way to the summit. Their movements are slow and methodical yet graceful. Distant peaks ring the horizon like stunning diamonds. This is an image of freedom. In fact, one of the most popular mountaineering books in English is called “Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills.”

A sailboat glides along the rolling waves of a blue sea under bright sunny skies. The sails are full of wind and the boat leans gracefully as it moves quickly through the water. The crew sits along the windward rail as they scan the undulating surface of the sea. This too is an image of freedom. In fact, “freedom” is a common word in sailing book titles, sailing social media account names, boat names, and sailing videos.

When I was younger I climbed mountains and I am still an armchair mountaineer. But these days you will more often find me and my family on our little sailboat at our local lake. From experience I can attest to the beauty of these sports. I can also attest to what freedom actually means when climbing mountains and sailing boats. It’s not exactly the romantic image of freedom of the book cover or poster. And here lies a lesson on true freedom compared to the popular libertine and libertarian concepts of liberty we often find today.

Both of these analogies of freedom offer us images of people who have left behind the cares of the world. Life is more simple, it seems, when one hikes the hills and sails the seas. In a real sense that is true. But it’s also deceptive. At every moment the mountains and the seas put up challenges and dangers that are very real and often require strict movements and calculated responses. In fact, each sport has its own highly specific tools, knowledge, actions, and language. Make a mistake and one will suffer, perhaps even die. That sounds rather harsh but it is, in fact, part of the appeal. It is also, ironically, where one finds freedom.

These little scenes are much like life, but we often don’t see it that way. Freedom, we are told, is to be able to do whatever one wants without restrictions. Yet this kind of freedom quickly becomes a form of slavery to one’s passions. True freedom comes from stripping away everything that is unnecessary, everything that is unfruitful. But that only makes sense when one seeks a goal of great value.

Around 600 A.D., John Climacus wrote his famous ascetical treatise, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, outlining thirty steps upwards towards the perfect model of perfection, Jesus Christ. Those steps are the virtues that counter the passions, and by overcoming the passions we increase in righteousness and begin, by God’s grace through the saving actions of Jesus Christ, to enter into the process of theosis. That ascetical work, hard as it is, leads us towards the freedom from sin and into the joy of union with God. That ascetical work is like the limitations self imposed by the mountaineer and sailor done to ensure success.

For the Christian the goal of great value, also called the pearl of great price, is theosis. More than being free of sin and going to Heaven, although that is part of it, theosis is about partaking in the Divine Life. We are told by Christ that the first shall be last, that only the man who gives up his life will find it, that the seed must die in order for the tree to grow, to take up our crosses and follow Him. Emptying ourselves we will receive a fullness beyond compare. Only in giving up our freedom will we receive true freedom. These are hard words to take. In fact, they are impossible to accept unless the Holy Spirit softens our hearts because it is so unnatural to us sinners.

If we are to be like God, to partake of the Divine Life, then we must give up everything that is not a part of God. We must give up our passions, that is our pride, anger, vanity, lusts, and self-centeredness. We must become poor in spirit, mourn, be meek, hunger and thirst for righteousness, be merciful, be pure in heart, be peacemakers, be willing to be persecuted because of righteousness, and accept that others will insult us falsely say all kinds of evil against us. In broad strokes this is the “ladder” we must climb if we are to reach the summit.

Although we need to be reminded of this regularly we also know it to be true, our consciences bearing this out. If we reject our consciences then we are rejecting our salvation. This is the height of foolishness. We become like ships that founder and sink.

This charge I commit to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophetic utterances which pointed to you, that inspired by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith[.] (1 Timothy 1:18-19)

Mountaineers and sailors know that accepting severe limits on their freedom within the context of mountaineering and sailing is the only way to achieve true freedom and thus true joy in those endeavors. Only through sever limits do we truly live. By analogy it is also the way for the disciple of Christ, the one who takes up their cross and follows Him.