10 June 2004

Kevin O'Brien's latest column touched on a point I find fascinating, something I tried to deal with in the Welcome/About Me section of my 2004 Web site. As Kevin points out, there's a difference between bottom-up (democratic) and top-down (God-ruled) organizations. As I tried to point out in January, that perception is at the heart of our world problems today.

But leaving that previous train of thought aside, I think we've wandered into an even more intriguing frontier of freedom and religion: the idea that freedom is more foundational, crucial and momentous than any belief system and that this fruitful expanse is worth exploring. Freedom makes belief possible.

STUCK WITH FREEDOM

First, we're stuck with freedom simply because of the way our brains work, sometimes under our control but at other times definitely not. Sometimes we think purposefully and sometimes the mind operates in its own mysterious and autonomous way, and then presents us with the fruits of its labor — "Eureka, I have found it!" Therefore, the ideas we cherish today may seem trivial tomorrow — or downright dumb.

INCONSISTENT

So, our most basic experience of ourselves is that we're inconsistent, and our inconsistency throws out myriad alternatives and possible courses of action. Freedom is forced on us by the brain's complicated processing power and by it's ability to check its own results and revise past work — whether we like it or not. All animals react, adapt and take complicated action to ensure survival; but we are the only animal that can decide not to — because we're the only animal that can decide.

It's not so much that we have free will as that free will has us. We each possess something greater than him or herself: a brain that functions in ways we find surprising — or even threatening. Space opens up between thought and action. Function forces freedom. Having a mind is very confusing.

DEMOCRACY

Now we come to democracy, a system set up to give us more choices than we'd previously enjoyed. But too much choice can drive us crazy. Sometimes it's helpful to narrow the field of alternatives. The return to religious fundamentalism across the board, as described by Karen Armstrong in "The Battle for God," is a good example of escape from freedom on a worldwide, cross-cultural scale. Freedom is another word for confusion.

I don't want to say that people flock to religion to escape confusion because others have already said it much better me and because it's truth-value has been eroded by its status as a cliché, and I am trying to say something new. What I am leading up to is that freedom is more crucial and foundational than religion — bigger than "God." Here's why.

FREE WILL

If you're secular, you already value freedom, so let's approach it from the believer's point of view: If you go to church you probably accept that "God" gave people free will and you realize that your "correct" religious choices depend on you. In fact, this earns you elevated status in the eyes of a deity, that you've chosen Him over all other "false" deities and doctrines, that as an individual, you recognize the "truth" and follow it.

So, keeping the church angle in place: The irony is that if you didn't have freedom in the first place you could never be the sort of true believer "God" wants you to be. So in that sense, even the devoted believer will have to admit that free will and freedom are bigger than any single religion; freedom is the pre-existing condition required for religion; you can only be religious in a context where nonbelief is possible; freedom is the open space that allows for all manner of views and theologies to flourish. Freedom comes before belief.

OBJECTION

Let me stop and address an objection. I would bet right now that someone is saying, "But freedom comes from God!" The problem with that statement is that ideas about "God" always spring from some system; after all, the main task of each religion is to tell people who "God" is and what "God" wants; and all God-talk goes back to those definitions. But you can't fold freedom back into any single description of "God" any more than you can fold the landscape into the map.

CHANGE

Even the most devoted believer knows that people change their minds. He may think he'll never change his, but he knows it's happened with others, and he must take account of this all-too-human trait.

Think about it: Judaism/monotheism was founded by people who previously believed in many gods. Christianity was created by Jews, so those founders obviously changed their cherished ideas. And Protestantism was created by Catholics, so those lapsed Catholics obviously changed their cherished beliefs. Some people want to believe that religion is a top-down organization, but it's really bottom-up: people decide what constitutes truth. Religion is slow-motion democracy.

In short, we don't always know what we're thinking or believing. Things change. The mind has a mind of its own.

Whether we say, "People change their minds," or "Peoples' minds change almost of their own accord in exceedingly mysterious ways," the end result is the same: No one knows what he or she will dream tonight or think tomorrow. A person can spend his whole life tucking himself into a cozy (or complicated) belief system and wake up the next morning naked on a frigid mountain peak. That's a brute fact of life, which points directly at the vast freedom-space in which all people and belief systems have their being.

TO SUMMARIZE

The idea of free will shows that freedom is essential to religion because you can't be the "right" sort of believer without making myriad right choices — you don't get points for doing right if it's impossible to do wrong. Freedom is the field on which you fight your battles and gain salvation, each according to his own set of beliefs and values, of course.

Also, the idea of democracy is important because it provides the institutionalized space for choice, which, surprisingly, is as necessary for religious people as secular ones. And this is unexpected because religious people would much rather praise "God" than explore freedom. They want to reference rules not discuss choices. They're not interested in the bigger picture. They try to tuck everything back into scripture; the failure to accomplish this simply results in more and more scriptures. Certainty multiplies while wisdom evaporates. And what's truth got to do with it?

It suddenly seems especially ludicrous to assert that this is a Christian country — or should be — or that personal choices should be taken away from us by the government. If "God" wants us to make right decisions, then the best way to facilitate that is to keep open a wide variety of choices, yes?

WIDE OPEN SPACES

While many people want to explain the doctrines and merits of their belief systems — as if there's nothing more important to discuss — I think it's more interesting to point at the crucial, foundational open space in which thought and choice erupt on a grand scale. Freedom-space is the necessary hot-house seed-ground for all the thoughts, actions, feelings, ideas, theories, lifestyles and belief systems we've ever seen — and for all of those yet to come. The shorthand way to explain this: Freedom is bigger than "God."  

Learning to excel within a specific religion seems less advantageous than learning to negotiate the vast ocean of freedom from which all belief systems rise like so many islands. And an island is not the whole world, even though it may seem so to an inhabitant.

I would rather be a sea captain than a headhunter.  

BIGGER THAN GOD • BIGGER THAN GOD II • MARCUS BORG • THE FOG OF WAR • THE FAILURE OF JUDGMENT • LINCOLN • PASCAL • POPPER