- When a dear friend of mine shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ with me, he knew nothing of my intellectual struggles. There was one thing that caught my attention that night when he talked to me about his faith: "You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free." And then Jesus adds: "And if the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed."
There was the solution to my problem! I was blind to search for an impersonal Truth, an inexorable, merciless entity that holds the universe in an iron grip. And I was blind to search for Freedom that was focused on myself so much that would make the rest of the world irrelevant -- and make me irrelevant in the process. Truth was possible to know only if it was itself a Person; and Freedom was possible to have only if it was itself a Person. That Person couldn't be a mere man -- or I would be in slavery. He must be a god, or rather, God, the Creator of the Universe. And if the Bible was true, then my problems had one reason: I was a stranger to God, and thus I was a stranger to Freedom, Ethics, and Justice. I had to come back to Him, through the redemption He provided in Jesus Christ. Only then I had...everything.
If He was the Creator, He was the Truth. Knowing Him, I would know the Truth. He was Freedom too: He created my very nature and He knew what I should do to be in harmony with my real nature. And He was Justice for He gave me the rules for a just society that has liberty and justice for all. What all the philosophers wanted but couldn't find, He had it, and He was it.
Therefore I couldn't be a libertarian without Christ. I tried, and it was impossible -- philosophically and ethically. It was self-contradictory, it was against the very nature of things, and it was believing in a set of assumptions that had no discernible connection with reality or with each other. Only in Christ I had them all brought together in a coherent whole. And only in Christ did it make sense to be willing to die for your freedom -- without Him death was the ultimate judge of things, and slavery was preferable to facing death. "Give me liberty or give me death" was folly in a world without Christ -- but now it is divine wisdom in Him.
I can see being a true libertarian means following Christ. But I fear a situation where people say you have to be a libertarian in order to follow truly Christ.
ReplyDeleteI can also see being a true plumber or true grocery-store-bagger means following Christ as well.
But it's the "Christ + Something Else" fallacy that I'm worried about. I do not see that fallacy in this article, but that kind of thinking isn't too far away from it, right?