Forging Truth

A colleague of mine recently wrote the following:

To me, liberty is not simply a political philosophy. It is my earnest attempt to bring people out of darkness, intellectually and spiritually. My advocacy of liberty is a call to the masses to reject all tyranny over the minds of men. This philosophy transcends questions of the scope of government. It is a cultural revolution, a rejection of ill-conceived prejudices and worn-out, anachronistic traditions that encourage ignorant conventions. This is a vision of a society far different from the one in which we share in today: one that operates on the premises of cooperation, tolerance, and rationality.

This surmises most of what makes me queasy with a portion of the libertarian movement. While we both reach the same conclusion, we do so through different means. Instead of being a question of efficient or even contented living, individual freedom becomes a means to “bring yourself out of the darkness, intellectually and spiritually”.

My biggest reason to opposing centralized force and control is because I don’t trust people. We all have darkness inside, a result from our fallen natures. The more power a given individual has over others, the more likely that they’ll do evil things to others. To borrow from C. S. Lewis, people who get into power tend to act like school-yard bullies. Even if they have the best intentions, they’re likely to a lot of harm before they’re done.

 Instead, others support economic and political freedom because it places the individual at the center of the epistemological universe. Man becomes an end to himself, and he’s set out to search for what those ends are. Subjectivity and post-modern “tolerance” reign.

The worshipers of the self would instantly object to me referring to a fallen nature. A priestess of this alter, Ayn Rand, took especial offence at the concept of original sin, calling it an affront to justice, and a removal of the will. She cannot stand the idea that evil might be in our natures and against our ability to change. This reveals a fundamental difference between Objectivism (and related philosophies) and Christianity.

The “spirituality” of individual freedom is a far cry from true spiritual freedom. To liberate oneself from reality is no liberation, but enslavement.  Spiritual freedom is not to create a god that best suits you, but to realize who God really is. Yet, this is not something we can do ourselves. There’s very little we can learn of God simply by watching sunsets. Instead, He must reveal himself to us. We’ll never hear His quiet, undemanding voice as long as we continue to place ourselves, our voices, first. A self-driven spirituality will ignore God as He is, and instead craft a false imagining serving us.