The simplest and yet the most lavish gift that God has given us is our free will. When we teach our children the faith, we teach them that birds, stars, trees, and even planets and galaxies follow the laws of nature to the letter. God spoke them into motion, and they do not have the option to write their own story. We human beings, on the other hand, are the freest of free. We can choose love, and that is the only way that love can exist: when it is freely chosen.
This is why the term “anti-choice” when applied to Christians opposing abortion is so ironic. The fullness of Christianity leads to complete freedom, complete choice. The Christian, fully realized, is the epitome of pro-choice. When we use our will to choose the highest good for the other, we are fully free.
In his book Interior Freedom, Father Jacques Phillipe writes about how freedom and love are inextricably linked:
“Love is neither taken nor bought. There is true love, and therefore happiness, only between people who freely yield possession of the self in order to give themselves to one another. Here we can get some idea of how precious freedom is. Freedom gives value to love, and love is the precondition of happiness. The reason why people attach so much importance to freedom must be because they perceive this truth, however confusedly; and from that point of view, it must be admitted they are right.”
If we do not habitually choose the good of the other, we will stop recognizing it. In the beginning, we all know what is right in our hearts. When we do not choose the good when we hear the inner promptings, we numb our conscience and drown out the voice of the Spirit who leads us to God.
Freedom, though it retains its original name, has become disfigured. This is how we’ve come to this point in our culture where there is so much wilful confusion over simple concepts of identity and metaphysics. Yet we already know what is true.
Scripture tells us multiple times (in both the Old and New Testaments) that God’s law is written in our hearts:
“‘But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the Lord, ‘I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people’” (Jer 31:33).
And again:
“The conduct [of the Gentiles] shows that what the Law commands is written in their hearts” (Rom 2:15).
And one more for good measure:
“This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws upon their heart, and on their mind I will write them” (Heb 10:16).
We have all been given a sacred level of agency over our lives and our own decisions. At some point we knew in our hearts, categorically, when something was gravely wrong. Not all of us may surmise the subtleties of certain doctrines, but we need only watch a child react to injustice to know what we already know. Life gives us many opportunities to mute or to heed the inconvenient voices of our conscience.
Freedom is not the path of least resistance; it is not the satisfaction of our every whim. Our lack of lasting happiness despite our obscene level of comfort would indicate that we were made for a higher plane of fulfillment.
So much does God value human freedom that he subjected his own divine Son to our flawed judgment. He was delivered into our panicked, prideful hands. And so we can (and must) simultaneously say to our neighbour, “You are completely free to do as you please,” and also to God, “Father, forgive them.”
Although this is often not enough. Our words will be twisted and construed as threatening, controlling, and narrow-minded. The “setting people free” business can lead to death or at least social and professional suicide (apologize right now for your beliefs!) Setting people free often leads to the cross. Why? Because people do not want to be set free; they want to be affirmed in their sin, and they want you to say that it is good.
We have to keep our minds and our lives uncomplicated and keep our focus on the law that is written in our hearts.
“When we concentrate too much on something that isn’t right, and make it our main topic of conversation, we end up giving evil more substance that it has,” Father Phillipe writes. “Deploring evil sometimes only strengthens it. I recently heard a priest say, ‘I’m not going to spend my life denouncing sin. That would be doing it too much honour. I would rather encourage good than condemn evil.”
