The Autonomy of the Devil versus The freedom of Christianity

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Before i was a Christian, the first thing that came to mind was the idea of restriction. I found it unfavourable because i thought that my freedom was being restricted, and in a sense i was infected by what you might call the spirit of autonomy. I think there is an unspoken culture in society that one ought to be free to do what ever you want so long as you are not physically harming anybody. That is the only rule.

But then you have Christianity that says we must love, and out of this principle we see a theology that argues the we must be celibate before marriage, that we must seek the fulfilment of others and not just ourselves. In effect, the world isn’t just a playground and human beings are not toys for us to play with.

People scoff at these Christian rules, but when you understand them it becomes evident that they fulfil the highest dignity of a human being. We cannot just use each-other for pleasure but in fact we must love each other and in that love we find true freedom and true dignity. In reality it is the preferred autonomy that the world desires that enslaves us and in fact robs us of our dignity.

This is just something that came to mind. We are called not to be of the world.

It would be interesting to discuss how Christianity is different from the world and why it’s the most rational and fulfilling way to live.
 
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True freedom is to be free from sin, to be detached from this world and its many distractions.
 
Dan_Defender said:
True freedom is to be free from sin
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True, but one must first understand what a sin is, and while most people can agree that some things are wrong (despite differences in belief) it is important for us to shine light on the root of it’s meaning since sin isn’t always obvious beyond a mere statement of Christian fact.
 
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IWantGod said:
But then you have Christianity that says we must love
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Everything was very well said, but I love what you wrote here so much I’m going to incorporate it into my own morality apologetics and elsewhere. Christian morality is how we properly express love for ourselves, others and God.
 
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Before I came into the church I thought that it was a bunch of rules to follow as well. I’ve come to see it more like learning how to drive. We get a driver’s manual, we have to study it, write a test at the driver facility. Then there’s the part where we get behind the wheel. We need someone to teach us, coach us, someone to test us, give us a license. Finally, after much effort, we have this freedom called a driver’s license. Why do we need to go through this? Because we are going to share the road with a million other drivers and their families.

The Catholic faith is much like this. We have a book too, the scriptures. We have a building we go to, we have instructors. We have the saints.

Things don’t go well when someone says ‘I find waiting at a red light too restrictive’. These speed limits are very binding. I prefer to drive on the sidewalk to get past all these cars. Then there’s poor driving conditions. Icy roads, poor visibility, distractions. It’s times like this that we see the benefit of everyone following the same rules of the road. Stopping at stop signs is a smart thing to do. Slowing down when the road conditions are poor is a smart idea. The rules are no longer restrictive, but a way to share the road with the least amount of car wrecks.

So is our faith. Our faith guides our path. Our destination is heaven. May we all arrive there safely.
 
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