We Americans pride ourselves on our freedom, considering ourselves to live as a free people in a free land. Our President has even advanced the claim that it is our freedom that causes many Muslims to hate us and to commit acts of terror against us. Whether that be the case or not, it is an axiom for us that we and our land are free. Patrick Henry’s words, which once rang in the hearts of all Americans, place the highest value on liberty: “Give me liberty, or give me death.” We might well ask ourselves whether we yet feel so strongly about it.

But what is this vaunted freedom? Do we possess authentic freedom or a cheap imitation? From what are we free? Are we absolutely or relatively free? If only relatively free, what are the proper limitations on our freedom keeping it from being absolute, and at what point does relative freedom become ‘unfreedom’? And once we have understood what this freedom is in which we exult, to what end is it to be directed? One could write a long treatise to address these questions and others concerning this concept we hold dear.

 This evening in our parish’s Dostoyevsky reading group, we encountered the following passage from Book Six, Chapter Three of Brothers Karamazov (published in 1881) which should prompt us to think about the nature of freedom:

The world has proclaimed the reign of freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom of theirs? Nothing but slavery and self-destruction! For the world says:

“You have desires and so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the most rich and powerful. Don’t be afraid of satisfying them and even multiply your desires.” That is the modern doctrine of the world. In that they see freedom. And what follows from this right of multiplication of desires? In the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; in the poor, envy and murder; for they have been given rights, but have not been shown the means of satisfying their wants. They maintain that the world is getting more and more united, more and more bound together in brotherly community, as it overcomes distance and sets thoughts flying through the air.

Since Dostoyevsky’s time and even before, a freedom has been proclaimed in the world that may well be false, that may actually be slavery and self-destruction. The essence of this freedom is to be able to satisfy your desires. “This is a free country, I can do what I want.” If we have grown up in these United States, we have no doubt heard someone say this, and perhaps we have said it ourselves. If this is how we conceive of our freedom, to be able to do what we want, then this is a freedom that Dostoyevsky claims is actually slavery and self-destruction. Is this a just assessment? We shall presently see.

‘Multiplication of desires’ may well be said to be the goal of advertising. Is it freedom to be full of desires? To have an ever-growing appetite for consumption? To have eyes bigger than our stomachs or budgets? One frequent result of growing desires that calls this conception of freedom into question is a heavy burden of  consumer debt . Is indebtedness freedom? Is it freedom to be full of desires that cannot be fulfilled due to lack of means (in the case of the poor)? Is it freedom to be able fulfill each and every desire as it comes along? What happens to a human being when he can and does indulge every desire?

Alas, put no faith in such a bond of union. Interpreting freedom as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own nature, for many senseless and foolish desires and habits and ridiculous fancies are fostered in them. They live only for mutual envy, for luxury and ostentation. To have dinners, visits, carriages, rank and slaves to wait on one is looked upon as a necessity, for which life, honour and human feeling are sacrificed, and men even commit suicide if they are unable to satisfy it. We see the same thing among those who are not rich, while the poor drown their unsatisfied need and their envy in drunkenness. But soon they will drink blood instead of wine, they are being led on to it. I ask you is such a man free? I knew one “champion of freedom” who told me himself that, when he was deprived of tobacco in prison, he was so wretched at the privation that he almost went and betrayed his cause for the sake of getting tobacco again! And such a man says, “I am fighting for the cause of humanity.”

Dostoyevsky challenges the notion that freedom is defined by the ability to satisfy desires. People often become enslaved to the desires that they habitually satisfy. Of course, ’satisfaction’ of desires is fleeting in this world. We eat, satisfying our hunger, only to hunger again a few hours later. We experience the satisfaction of a pleasure, but it is short-lived and must be sought again. But then the law of diminishing returns kicks in: more of the pleasure is needed to achieve the same level of satisfaction; as time passes, it satisfies less and less, but we are addicted. Can one who is addicted to anything be considered to be truly free? Does our way of life tend to result in addiction or moderate, self-controlled use? 

How can such a one fight, what is he fit for? He is capable perhaps of some action quickly over, but he cannot hold out long. And it’s no wonder that instead of gaining freedom they have sunk into slavery, and instead of serving the cause of brotherly love and the union of humanity have fallen, on the contrary, into dissension and isolation, as my mysterious visitor and teacher said to me in my youth. And therefore the idea of the service of humanity, of brotherly love and the solidarity of mankind, is more and more dying out in the world, and indeed this idea is sometimes treated with derision. For how can a man shake off his habits, what can become of him if he is in such bondage to the habit of satisfying the innumerable desires he has created for himself? He is isolated, and what concern has he with the rest of humanity? They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.

Living to satisfy desires leads to bondage to habits, and this bondage to the habits which bring us pleasure renders us self-centered and isolated from others. But man is a social animal, not an island unto himself. It is only in relation to others that he can truly find and know himself, but his so-called freedom enslaves him to pleasures and cuts him off from his fellow man.

Dostoyevsky goes on to contrast this way of life with monasticism, how through prayer, fasting, and obedience man is freed from the tyranny of desires that he can truly love God and others. But this freedom is not limited to monks: it is available to every Christian who submits himself to Christ and His Church and gives himself to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

Of course, in this reflection we have neither established what true freedom is nor demonstrated a Christian conception thereof such as Dostoyevsky’s; no, we have only challenged a prevailing notion of freedom and found it wanting. What is true freedom in the spiritual, social, and political realms? Freedom from what? Freedom to do, to be what? I hope to consider these and other questions in reflections to come. 

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Yesterday evening and this morning we observed the liturgical beginning to the Nativity Fast in church with the appointed lenten-style Vespers and Matins. The lenten troparia and the prayer of St. Ephrem the Syian with prostrations break the routine of regular weekday Vespers and help us enter into the spirit of fasting even as our country looks ahead to the feasts of Thanksgiving and the “Christmas season” (really “pre-Christmas” season). Ahead of us is a journey through forty days of ascetic effort to reach a place where we may see Jesus of Nazareth for who He truly is and to worship him with the Magi.

One obstacle to reaching this place is our intellectual familiarity with the story, and that familiarity, if it falls short of breeding contempt in this case, may still generate a barrier to deeper apprehension of the Truth. Yes, we know Jesus, the Son of God was born of the Virgin Mary in the cave with singing angels and lowing oxen, and we celebrate that at Christmas (do we?). Our mind knows the facts of the story. But do we truly apprehend for ourselves the One who came and what His coming portends for us humans made in God’s image?

The Magi saw the star heralding the birth of the King of the Jews. They undertook a long, dangerous journey to come worship Him (and notice that their worship in part involved bringing costly gifts). The distinctive services marking the beginning of the Fast rise as a star calling us to set out to draw near to our rightful King. We need this journey back to Christ’s side. In the course of the year, we may wander from Christ, forget Him, or even keep Him in a small compartment in our life, forgetting that He needs to fill the whole. The fast calls us back to His side to apprehend Him for who He is—the God-man, the second Person of the eternal, holy Trinity made man for us—Emmanuel, God with us. Yes, we know this, too, intellectually, but we need to apprehend with the our spiritual eyes and our heart, to gaze on the eternal God made man to make man by grace to be what He is by nature, and it is by the Fast—prayer, almsgiving, and fasting—that our spiritual sight is cleared that it may apprehend Him.

Fasting may be misunderstood. It is not merely the fulfillment of a legalistic religious requirement to be in good standing with the Church. The Church calls us to fast, but not as an end in itself, only as a means to an end, an end that can scarcely be attained without fasting. It is not a misery creating effort in self-denial to impress God or win his favor. He has no need for our fasting, and it cannot impress Him. But we need fasting to help subdue the body to the soul, to collect our scattered thoughts, to reintegrate our vision to focus on the One who matters most, the One whose coming marks the decisive turning point in history, the One about whom all history turns and in whom it finds its only meaning.

Fasting at this time of year is particularly difficult. The world spends the time leading up to Christmas in feasting, not fasting, in self-indulgence, not self-denial, and then when the Feast comes, the world, satiated with its excess, is ready to put up the decorations, put out the trees, and go on a diet. Christians deny themselves of physical food that they may receive the spiritual Bread from heaven, and only having seen Him on Christmas morning do they keep the Feast with joy.
As we begin the Fast, we may see ourselves as beginning the journey of the Magi to culminate in seeing the eternal Son made flesh through the Virgin Mary. May God grant us all to arrive at that destination and to be changed by the encounter.

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