Episode 041: On Freedom and Christianity

[Music] this is God's planning get up-to-date on all our latest episodes at opec org slash god's flaming welcome back to god's plenty i am father Gregory fine joined here by Father Jacob birth Enchantix how are things well are you um I'm doing what he hesitates oh no no I got nervous when you said joined to your body because he paused for a second than I thought should I say my name is my name then he said my name so you never know it's the sign of a good host that he makes the other party uncomfortable within three seconds of the program beginning so there you have it accomplished nailed it okay perf so we are here back for another episode of God's planning and we are let's say in the month of May a month dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary to her intercession it's a month dedicated hopefully to warmer weather and to less of a pandemic and to other good associated things so the end of the school year for many college students and perhaps maybe a little bit of return to normalcy here during these summer months so let's see what's on the docket for domestic Institute stuff we're still doing quarantine lectures we're actually starting a new thing called Aquinas 101 live so we've had these Aquinas 101 videos that we've been airing for the past I don't know maybe nine months and now we're gonna do like a Kiwanis 101 live where you'll have a couple of videos as a word that have come out in the past and then you'll have an opportunity to kind of go deeper with the speaker on those videos so the speaker will give like a little funny minute presentation about some overarching theme and then have extended time for questions for those who are enrolled in the course or not necessarily enrolled in the course so I'm gonna give the first one on Thursday next so this would be Thursday May 21st which is the anniversary of my ordination so yeah what's funny okay dick but that father he was ordained a year before me so still earlier there's actually one day nevermind okay here we go so um so yeah we're going to do that on a 21st which would be good and I'm gonna speak about some of the first few videos in this series so st. Thomas Satan's collar which is just kind of background on st. Thomas and then like what he wrote how you kind of come to appreciate the zoom and how to read an article of the Summa so it'll be a basic introduction into how to dive into st. Thomas who can at first blush be a little bit intimidating so that's on the new TI other things how's things location office things location office we're kind of we're at the point here in the year we're kind of in a lull just getting into the summer we don't do a ton during this summer student brothers are gone people are like at the beach I'm not at the beach but other people are so we're kind of like at the end of our calendar year but gearing up for the fall looking you know hopefully kool-aid won't be destroying all of our plans but you know for the last 60 years but I think you've order to the fall vocation again this fall event so that's that'll come quickly enough but it's not worse time kind of a time for us to recenter refocus so we're doing that yeah some little projects kind of on the horizon some you know kind of standard standard things that's it totes yeah all right well let's get to it and dive into our topic for today we're gonna talk about Christianity and freedom so in the world around us or as they dramatically say at the beginning of most movie trailers in a world and then they fill in some other thing that's the necessary back story to some catastrophic event which video is all we should pay for someone to say that for you next exactly yes i'ma say $0.00 no W okay okay just kidding so in a world where people have a great desire for a great hunger and thirst for Liberty it's important to kind of get freedom right so yeah maybe maybe we can talk to us a little bit about what the prevailing or the kind of modern concept is of what it means to be free so what's on offer like when people talk about wanting to be free what do they typically have in mind I think there's when we think about it there's kind of a I was gonna say double-edged sword I don't know if that's the right metaphor or image but we're gonna stick with that so that way I'm not kind of thinking about it like I when we think about freedom and one is from the sort of external kind of realities that impinge on us and the other is I think has to do is have our internal reactions or approach to things so when I think of the external I often think of like the pro-abortion kind of movement like my body my choice that the idea that nothing that that nothing ought to impinge my freedom from the outside that I am an autonomous individual who ought to be able to make decisions make choices about whatever I want whether it's something you know more grave like you know sort of abortion or even just like choosing food where I want to live how on a structure my day what I want to put into my body who I want to hang out with all these things that that nobody at some point we kind of become adults we're no longer children and like we don't need parents or people or like did this sort of white patriarchy telling us what to do whatever that may represent from the outside the other isn't kind of the internal I think approach or reaction to these things well how do I then how how am I able to make decisions what what in me is freeing me or keeping me kind of bound to two sort of limits that would impinge on my freedom what are kind of the internal glass ceilings so perhaps these are much or perhaps these are less obvious but even just are like physical abilities emotional abilities these we can think of kind of the this kind of stupid cliche of like when we end a relationship it's it's not you it's me it's like that that's always a lie usually that's always a lot you're always really saying it's the other person but there's a reality I think too that if when we're thinking about kind of freedom of like what are we then able to do so if this external of what's what limits us and the internal of what in my limited body within myself but all of that all that when we're thinking about freedom all of those things are always negative things and they always seem to be negative things because the idea is sort of the modern contemporary notion of freedom is that one is truly free when one is when one is unencumbered by whether the external or internal things and when one has a billion choices to choose between there's no restriction on anything so the ultimate freedom would be if you're kind of in like your mind palettes or in a room or whatever then you have just had with respect to let's just take a silly example like food or something to eat you know ice cream milkshakes they recruit new trains you had every single possible choice of a milkshake sitting before you and your ultimate freedom would be that you could just choose anything that you any of them that you wanted wholly unencumbered you know you don't have to drive anywhere you don't have to pay anything they don't have to tell you that we can make a milkshake with almonds in it because it'll break the blender the nuns have made father Gregory once disappointing what was theirs Joyce Joyce Joyce of the UDF yeah Joyce ruin my day yeah so all of these things that nothing would be in your way and you'd have limitless possibility is this sort of idea of freedom I think it's I don't know I'm just gonna make this up but kind of the Enlightenment idea the autonomous individual still kind of you know it's steeped within our culture yeah I want to get it so like I want to kind of get into the particulars the way in which a lot of people experience both freedom and the lack of freedom or Liberty or the absence thereof so depending on one's kind of age state in life etc there are different things that strike us as big-ticket items so you might think many people experience or you know have have debts that they need to get out from under so say you're like applying for religious life you have debt or say you're you know getting married to somebody and you have credit card debt you know like educational debt or credit card debt or whatever you just have you have a mortgage you know and the thing cost you X amount of dollars and you're gonna be paying 3 X amount of dollars over the course of the next 30 years we experience these encumbrances or burdens burdens as crushing as oppressive you know when we think about too long or too much they kind of take the wind out of our sails and prove especially depressing and so we want to keep you know cast off the expectations attendant upon these things or you know refinance or declare bankruptcy or whatever you know we need to get away from it because that often for us is an experience of something very crushing another way in which people often experience it is in terms of relationships so you might have two parties in a relationship and let's say that one of them is like they have like greater emotional expectations of the relationship and they're kind of like trying to constantly elicit some vulnerable response or some deep emotional sharing from the other party other party made kind of get like dragged along and willingly for a while but then come to the recognition that this is not what I want right and then you have the phenomenon of ghosting or you know like holding off at arm's length it's kind of bracing for impact and it ends up being like a very stilted relationship as a result or maybe even when it comes to making a big decision whether it's about like a job change or a vocation decision or something like that oftentimes we experience the options as as too much for us it's like we wish that somebody would just make it clear that it would be determined for us you often hear people say like Lord I'll do whatever you want but just you know to make it known so I think that a lot of us experienced our freedom both as a kind of locus of dignity but also as a very very great responsibility that sometimes we would prefer to do without and you mentioned kind of at the end talking about how this is an inheritance of the Enlightenment so there are a lot of you know kind of different notions that are at play or a lot of different philosophical understandings and we don't need to dive too terribly deep into them but maybe we could just talk for a little bit about like what's at the root of this so like what's the understanding of human nature that underlies this and I managed to kind of get things going formally it was customary to talk about form and form like finality there was the sense that we had a human nature and that that he would nature was for something but at a certain point in our philosophical history we kind of lost hold of that what would you say like what's the kind of modern understanding like do we have a nature is it for something how is that to be understood can you get any real consensus on that yeah it's you know we I guess I don't know if it's amongst just or within just Dominican circles or theological circles whatever but like be the whole sort of notion of nominalism kind of destroying the ability for us to talk about natures and kind of what things are and and what that does when we when we lose the ability which we have lost I think in many ways we can just look at any of this sort of you know you can go on YouTube and look at any kind of utter like these sort of College debates whether like conservative sort of pundits or liberal kind of pundits go onto a college campus and try to debate about X Y or Z and often this sort of the debate devolves into two kind of ships passing in the night there's not even in agreeance of basic terms and ideas such that people could have a debate but at least with respect to like form and finality or form an end this idea that things are made for particular things and to do them in particular ways so is it seems to be something that's completely lost or at least and even when people are kind of when we when we think about that when we push people on that but there's an unwillingness to even give like any ground on it so when we're thinking about the human person which is you know obviously the most important thing that comes into when we're talking you know about our lives rather than like what is a plant for and what's the end of a plant side okay you know usually eat it or like step on the grass or something like that I think the person has has a little bit more impact and that but that asks a question of like what is human nature what is the form of man and what is man made for what are we made for that that even that even weighed that faint wave thinking doesn't even enter into sort of what popular public discourse or even our own often which which then renders us really incapable of asking the questions of of choice and of choices in our lives with respect to being free and choosing things because we don't know the end of something we don't know how something behaves and what it's made for and then we're kind of at a loss when we're when we're asking the questions of then why do I do X or why or why don't I do this or that or does this actually sort of constitute or contribute to my functioning or behaving well or choosing well what we're all saying that you know this person is made in this way and is made for this thing and then this person is something completely different and has no relation to person a person B is wholly different person C is wholly different we're kind of we're kind of at a loss to say well then okay what does what happens for people together what can we say about the human person as as a whole as sort of a species that kind kind of sounds like logical rather than mmm whatever but without having that common ground we're kind of we do find ourselves at a loss yeah I think I think a lot of people to use intersection Awards might be like triggered by the thought of nature because a lot of those terms have become vexed in debates surrounding transgenderism and marriage equality and so oftentimes it's like two people vying and when nature is used sometimes people's experience of it being used is that it's used as a bludgeon right and that it's by like bow knighted backward barbaric Christian types who just hate but I think that we can you know if we're good about our approach to the philosophy and we're good about hosting a dialogue with substantive exchange we can actually build up real consensus as to what it means to have a nature and the purpose for which one has a nature because like I think people recognize that there are some things that you do and there's some things that you don't do depending on what you're dealing with so just like to build up a kind of basic understanding like for instance okay so we have teeth and we want those teeth to look decent enough because we're Americans with respect to the British out there apparently that is not highly prized um that's a joke just kidding okay so um so there are certain ways that we take care of our teeth and there's certain ways that we don't take care of our teeth so we have like enamel which is pretty you know good but you shouldn't have a ton of refined sugar because you can you know you can do serious harm to your enamel or you wouldn't like mouthwash with coca-cola and go to bed because it would start to rot your teeth that would be silly so people were like okay yelling teeth are for eating and as a result of which they should be tolerably healthy because it hurts to eat with unhealthy teeth so I should do what is necessary to keep my teeth healthy and as a result of which you know I'll floss once a day I'll brush two or three times a day I will take all the necessary measures and use a soft toothbrush even though it's infinitely more satisfying to like to crush with a medium toothbrush but apparently that my courage in all right so late so here's a very like silly basic simple thing talking about teeth but then we can do that at like a next level and the next level and a next level but before we get there let's take a quick break and leave you in suspense [Music] this is God's planning get up-to-date on all our latest episodes at opec org slash god's flaming welcome back to god's planning i am father Gregory pine again joined here by Father Jacob Bertrand and we're talking about the notion of freedom so we're we kind of led off with a description of many of our personal experience of how freedom registers in our lives how we tend to feel its weight or feel its responsibility and then just talking a little bit about how modern notions of freedom may play certain emphases and also suffer from certain D emphases and we talked a little bit about the understanding of nature which underlies that now we're kind of moving towards the notion of freedom that's proposed in you know kind of traditional Christianity and in order to get to that vision we're building up a picture of nature so he's talked about like a basic example of what a nature is and how one ought to treat the thing but let's talk about about human nature so like what is it when we talk about a human person how do we define it and what does it mean for a human person to act and to act well and how does that person come to its perfection so thoughts yeah I think the father just before the before before well before the break father Gregor was talking about that example of like the nature teeth and what it's used for how we treat it and then how how we how how we don't treat our teeth like brushing away our gums before before bed so as he was saying the you know silly face in example we can kind of move up the level of hierarchy arriving at like us so the question of what what is what constitutes our nature and then what kind of constitutes our freedom in that nature is is the foundation here of of being under able to understand this this sort of difference between the the Christian understanding of freedom and sort of the secular enlightenment postmodern jens ii millennial whatever all things combined together both potential is so I you know we I think I think that we have to to make this argument or I like to make this argument in a sort of or at least approach it in kind of a theological way so because not because I'm anti theology or that kind of thing but because we need not use something that not everybody agrees with in order to get everybody on board so I think that's important and I you know just his steal from st. Thomas Aquinas he does this kind of brilliantly when he when he's getting into his moral treatise ask some questions about you know what it is that you know that constitutes a good act or what motivates a good act in a person Thomas st. Thomas doesn't go into a sort of like you're creating the image of God I mean he's done this work already but it's it really really comes down to the question of happiness of what constitutes human happiness how you know we can all agree that what we do we do in the pursuit of the good or in the pursuit of something that fulfills us that makes us happy and we need not be a Christian we need not be a Catholic to agree with that so this is a fundamental reality of our human nature that we are that our will moves towards the good moves towards what's attractive or at least what we perceived to be good and in that we we can talk about our being free or not free in our in as far as we're able to pursue that good and as far as we're able to pursue happiness or the thing that make it makes us happy whether that be like brushing away our gums or like choosing a milkshake you know the two example is them you've used so far so I think that's for us that's an important spot whether we're thinking about our own lives or even like debating with other people you know when we say I'm a Catholic and they say you hate people and these all these sorts of people and you're oppressive and you just want the church's kind of to bear down and tell you what to do and well but let's take a step back you know let's let's find this common ground of what are we after we're after happiness so what constitutes is happiness and how do we move towards it I think is a really great place for us to start at least and it's like nature human freedom thing yeah yeah when Saint Thomas asked the question of like what is our final and he goes through a bunch of different options so like he starts with wealth for instance and he says you know like artificial wealth is for purchasing right so it refers you beyond itself and they says natural wealth like food clothing says for the body but the bodies for the soul so again it refers you beyond yourself or beyond itself and then he goes through like honor he says honor is principally in the one honoring you know it you don't feel honored unless there are people there to honor you and then talks about power and he says power is poised for action but it does not necessarily indicate that you will use it well and he goes through all of these different options and basically says that each of these options whether you know wealth honor fame power like sensible goods whatever that they all refer you beyond and he eventually comes to the term that you know God alone is is adequate for the fulfillment of our nature he's basically saying like we have minds with which you know we have hearts with which to love and our mind is not satisfied with one knowable thing nor is our heart satisfied with one loveable thing and so we're only ever going to find rest or contentment or real happiness in what is infinitely knowable what is infinitely good which is to say truth himself for goodness himself but he gets to that by philosophical argument and so the the vision that he has kind of built out of happiness demands of us a certain response so it's a matter of saying there's something out there by which we are perfected and our responsibility is to act in accord with that good but the fact is that like our minds can know tons of things and our hearts can be trained on tons of things so how is it that we can focus on the one thing by which will be built up and already here we see like we're dealing with an understanding of freedom which is at least in tension with the modern notion of freedom because with a modern notion of freedom it's I should be able to do all kinds of things I should be able to roll up to the UDF I should be able to look at 134 flavors and I should be able to like have a small little spoonful of each of them just so that I can say I did but with respect to you know like this now Christian notion that's forming I need to be able to find what is best what builds me up most perfectly in order to respond generously to that so here already we're talking about talking about virtue we're talking about a lot of different kind of involved concepts one of the things here that's that it kind of has to be reoriented in our thinking is with respect to freedom is is where where where does freedom sit in this mmm is freedom something that's external in the sense that like freedom consists in having a ton choices that are outside of me or is freedom something that is internal in my ability to choose the thing that will make me happy in that I mean perhaps I I think is uh is an important kind of shift in because we have to look at the the freedom is is less of a sort of thing that I kind of put myself into right this this sort of vistas infinite possibility is wholly unencumbered and much more about my my sort of trained ability and father Felger you just mentioned virtue and kind of trained in in the virtue of choosing the good thing and not being distracted by that but the sort of less than ideal or kind of garbage choices around you know if you use again that sort of ice cream kind of example you know if you know if you have a favorite ice cream you don't need a million choices you just need that one choice and you just need to know how to how to get that so that's a silly example but you know if we kind of move up again the hierarchy of sort of importance when we think about happiness of like fulfillment we as human beings we know that we don't need to like I don't know it's trying to think of like what fulfills some like plants like I don't know I'm trying to think of a stupid example but we know that like as like some animals eat grass we know that we don't need to eat grass for to be fulfilled to be satisfied even it kind of in like a in a hunger kind of mode so we can rule that off the table we can take the rule that out we can take that off the table this eliminates a choice but does that eliminate our freedom or does that give us greater freedom to pursue the things that do satisfy the Christian idea here is is that the person when we when we understand the nature of a person what we are and when we understand what we're moving towards namely God fulfillment in God we could talk about this in terms of happiness or different things that those things that do not constitute or do not contribute to the pursuit of that goodness and that happiness are not actually good things but it's kind of distractions from the end and are being distracted from those from that play through that plethora of options actually makes us less free mm-hmm less able to pursue that kind of good that we're after I you know our moral theology courses I the example of a musician or an athlete and I think is really helpful here so like the muse of like a musician of pianist you know you go to a concert to hear this this guy lady play you know an incredible piece of music and they've practiced for years and years and years and they can play this music you know and it's the most beautiful thing you've heard um but they've started with the very basics you know the scales the drills the the more simple music playing all this end of train and have drilled and practiced the free musician is not the musician who is untrained or who has sort of never kind of honed their skills or kind of eliminated their you know sort of bad choices of music or these sort of things but the person who is who is sort of the the expert because of their because of their ability to train and practice and and now are most free to flourish in that art of music you think the same thing of the athlete yeah so for us when we're thinking in the Christian conception to step away from kind of the secular notion our freedom really lies in our ability to pursue the good unencumbered by the millions of other distracting options yeah I mean like I think we should stick with some of these images because they're very applicable you talk about having a variety of options and almost being paralyzed by those options I think anyone who's ever been to a diner with a 16-inch menu has felt that and you just kind of go for your thing you know you go for your choice but also like to kind of play off this image here with of the musician but we can also talk about the athlete I think a lot of us for instance with running okay so like jogging a lot of people have it in their mind that they should do some cardio in order to be physically fit right heart health you know weight maintenance whatever but a lot of people only ever experience running as drudgery but for the great runner he kind of gets beyond the point of drudgery and comes to discover it is something delightful and this isn't just like a matter of brain chemistry and endorphins it's a matter of him feeling strong as a matter of him feeling fit it's a matter of him feel as you know Eric little says in the movie Chariots of Fire God's pleasure you know God made me for a purpose but he also made me fast there's a sense of like you have the growing conviction that this is the very thing for which you were made and that as you step into that as you kind of mature in that identity and hone the skills necessary for doing it excellently you feel you know like God's pleasure and doing the thing and I think that like you know you could say a similar thing about the art of soldiery the reason for which the soldier drills and trains isn't so that he becomes an otamatone and just a blind follower of orders it's because on the field of battle there are various eventualities that may arise and he will have kind of infused the reasons of his drill sergeants of his commanders of his generals into his very members such that he can respond to whatever stimulus arises in a way that's spontaneous in a way that's engaged and in a way that that makes for you know like him prosecuting well the discipline of war so here what we're talking about is not a matter of having tons of options and being paralyzed by them but a matter of being fixed on the good so that we are empowered to pursue it well stately and permanently in such a way that it becomes easy that it becomes prompt that it becomes joyful which is just to say that our freedom is something that only kind of arises as the as the result of a life lived virtuously a life lived kind of progressing towards the goal with these steady incremental gains so yeah maybe just like a final word then about ways that people can apply this notion of freedom practically in their lives as we wrap things up yeah I think often we can look at or people who don't practice the faith can look at the faith as a as a sort of as the church of kind of an oppressive reality that it limits human freedom that it takes away options that it seems to want to control and to sort of tell you what to do in your bedroom and in your private life and on your Sunday mornings and all of these things and and I think sometimes we can think that too we kind of you know like well sometimes it'd just be nice to like not have to do this or like just like you know not not that we want to like fall into sort of debauchery and and like mortal sin and that cramping but like sometimes nice not to worry and perhaps I mean I think it's a trick but the reality is though is that that the Christian life the life of a disciple and the life that the church kind of guides us in is a kind of art service as the training boundaries or like the bumpers in in our pursuit of the good our hearts our souls because of original sin because of our own sin our kind of tumultuous they're all over our passions see something they want it for a second and like the next second they want something else and they want something else and there are distractions but by the grace of God and through the sort of the teachings and the protections of the church we can see that that it kind of carves out that straight and narrow for us it explains to us that there are certain things that don't contribute and don't build up what is good for our ba for our well-being for our souls for our bodies these sorts of things and these ought not be seen as a limitation but as but as a way of saying of recognizing this is what constitutes human goodness and flourishing and my will my pursuit of the good need not be distracted by by those things that would take me off course which allows us to be more free to pursue the ultimate Goods and the goods here that we can you know these kind of earthly Goods that we can enjoy in virtuous ways so yeah rather than rather than kind of thinking that that somehow Christianity imposes regulations that are sort of unnatural to the human person by sort of taking away the Vista of options the Christian says well no I know who my option is I've chosen him because he's first chosen me now let me clear out all the garbage that would distract me and pursue him with everything I have and we're most free when we're able to get around get over get away from all of that would distract us from him yeah and in the end I mean the way that st. Paul describes it for freedom Christ has set us free or he speaks about is a kind of freedom in Christ so what we want is a fixity in the Lord you know the thing of which we want to be most certain is the Lord Jesus Christ he is the source and the end of our freedom and it's for this reason that you know Pope Benedict wrote the beginning of a Viscardi test I being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea which is to say not a matter of just following the rules well or getting the right answer right rather it is an event an encounter with a person which imparts the life a new horizon in a decisive direction which is to say like when we are fixed in the Lord when were fixed in Christ then we have hopes to be yet truly free and free indeed so without we're gonna wipe things up thanks so much for having joined us on this most recent episode of gospel in we're delighted that you did please share the podcast if you would you know tweet it out and send it on to a friend whom you think might benefit from it and then yeah we'll look forward to chatting with you again next time on Goss planning god bless [Music] thanks for listening to God's plan a work of the Dominican friars of the province of st. Joseph visit us at opec org [Music]

Channel: Godsplaining Podcast

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Keywords: catholic, dominican friars, theology, philosophy, religion, faith, order of preachers, godsplaining, seekers, Truth, preaching, questions, searching, prayer, meditation

Id: g_5tkzM1uMA

Length: 32min 21sec (1941 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2020