The first
Country Music band that ever got my attention was the Zac Brown Band. It was the Summer of 2007. My wife (who was not my wife yet) and I were
spending the summer apart. As I drove
down the ol’ country roads where I was living, I would roll the windows down,
turn the Country station up, and take in the wind. The rock and the twain reminded me of holding
my baby’s hand at the county fair. Ok
there was no county fair. But I do
remember hearing ZBB’s song, “Chicken Fried.”
Truth be told I liked “Whatever it is” better, but that song doesn’t
lead into the theme of this post. In
case you don’t know “Chicken Fried”, turn it up!
I wanted to
look at the bridge. If it helps you to
imagine listening to this during the Fourth of July fireworks, go ahead:
“I thank God for my life
For
the Stars and Stripes,
May
freedom forever fly, let it reign.
Salute the ones who died
The
ones who gave their lives
So
we don’t have to sacrifice
All
things we love
Like….
Our chicken fried. A cold beer on a
Friday night. A pair of jeans that fits just right. And the radio on.”
This part of
the song is very patriotic wouldn’t you say?
What does it say about freedom?
Freedom is something that is part of the USA. People have died and continue to die for this
freedom. The freedom enables us to enjoy
the things we love. For example? Fried Chicken, beer, jeans, and radio. Ignore for a moment that other countries also
have beer. If we could give a working
definition of Zac’s freedom it would be something like, “The ability to choose
and enjoy what you want among a multitude of options without external
restrictions.” That is a very popular
way of talking about freedom isn’t it?
I’m free as long as I can do what I want, when I want, and with whom I
want. Nearly any choice that we make is
“good” or “moral” or “ethical” as long as we are unrestricted in choosing it,
and it doesn’t hurt anyone else. Since
everyone is obsessed with sex, I’ll use it as an attention grabber. Any choice I make about sex is good or moral
as long as it’s consensual. Fair enough.
Christians
however have this nagging tendency to insist that there actually IS a law that
is outside of the individual, and the laws of the nation. This law is given to humanity by God, and it
not only tells us what we should do with our bodies, but how we should live in
all areas of our life. A choice is good
as long as it is in agreement with the laws of God. According to Christians, even an action that
I choose among many other options that only affects me can be considered
morally good or evil.
We’ve just
entered into my second class of my MA program, “Theological Ethics.” Welcome to the world of morality. Buckle your seatbelts because people tend to
get pretty fired up about morality.
Freedom is a
significant theme for Christian theology as we insist that God created humanity
with freedom. How that freedom is
understood is rather significant. Take William of Ockham for example:
Ockham was a
Franciscan Friar in the 12th century. Freedom for Ockham was similar to ZBB, being
able to choose your actions. Some people
call this “freedom of indifference.” Faced
with two options freedom of indifference is used well as long as there is
nothing hindering a person’s choice.
Simple enough. A person is
neither good nor bad and an action is neither good nor bad. What determines the “moral quality” of a
person or her actions is how closely they conform to the law of God. Ready for an example?
Sally lies
to Freddy. Is her choice morally good or
evil? I hope you chose evil. Why is her choice to lie evil? Because God commanded that we should speak
the truth.
What if God
commanded the opposite? What if God’s
law was to be dishonest with your friends?
Would Sally’s choice be morally good or evil? According to Ockham’s view, her choice would
be morally good. “Now now” you may say,
“God would never have allowed dishonesty to be part of God’s law.” Maybe not, but how do you know? Do you possess the mind of God?
This view is
still with us today. Don’t believe me?
Ok, back to sex. 1. Is a woman using her freedom when she chooses
to have sex with a man who isn’t her husband? 2. Is a woman’s choice to have sex with a man
who isn’t her husband morally evil? 3.
How do you know?
If you
answered “yes” to 1 and 2 you’ve inherited the “freedom of indifference”
tradition! You’ve really inherited it if
you answered 3 by mentally scanning passages from Leviticus to see if adultery
is forbidden by God’s law. This moral
system has been called a “morality of obligation” because one’s actions must
align with an external law of God.
There is
another way; a beautiful way; an excellent way; a way that leads to freedom!
Back to
Sally who lied to Freddy. Is Sally free
in choosing to be dishonest? Yes and no,
right? She was “free” insofar as she
could have chosen not to. But decisions are rarely that simple are they? Often there are pressures, circumstances, and
other obstacles that stand in the way of a morally good decision. Insert any number of very difficult
situations where in the face of a potential dishonesty, other goods are
obtainable. For example, Freddy may be a
young camper who is stranded up in a high tree. As Sally is coaxing him down
the tree from the ground, Freddy asks, “You’ve climbed this tree before right
Sally?” Knowing that his confidence in
her guidance is the only thing that will bring him safely down the tree, Sally
lies and says she has climbed the tree before.
She lied, but also gained a potentially life saving good, Freddy’s
confidence. So we see that often
circumstances are so complex that we may not be as “free” as we think. We could refer to addictions, temperaments, habits,
dangers, and any multitude of pressures that limit our freedom to really
choose. One of the results of sin,
according to the Catholic tradition, is the darkening of the intellect and
weakening of the will. St. Paul saw a
war within himself, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not
want is what I do.” Romans 7:19.
True
freedom, according to Thomas Aquinas is to be able to do the good, even in the
face of the adversities mentioned above.
“But that is sometimes incredibly arduous to accomplish!” Exactly.
This is why he insists that it can only be accomplished through training
in the virtues. At the beginning of the
moral life, the student in the school of virtues must learn the law of God, and
be guided by that law. But something
more is required than simple adherence to a law. As the student matures, she becomes guided by
the desire for truth and goodness that are not only spelled out by the law of God,
but imbedded in her very nature. Through
practice, prayer, and the grace of God, she internalizes virtues so that there
becomes joy in doing the good and the beautiful.
This virtue driven ethics depends
on an internal transformation so that there grows an abiding joy in doing the
difficult good. This entire systems
assumes two things. 1. That the law of God is not arbitrary. It assumes that what God outlines for right
moral living is a picture of the human fully alive—the human fully happy. “Blessed (or deeply happy) are the merciful...” 2.
That despite the darkening of the intellect and the weakening of the
will that was caused by sin, humans still long for the true, good, and
beautiful. That longing will only be fulfilled
through finding the true, good, and beautiful.
I’m sorry Zac Brown, as much as I
like your music, I’m not content with the simple ability to choose between
options. What I want is freedom to be
fully alive. I want freedom for
excellence.