Tish Harrison Warren (emphasis added):
Christian ethics call people to ideas of freedom that are not primarily understood as the absence of restraint, but instead as the ability to live well, justly and righteously. In Galatians, after an extended meditation on liberation, Paul says: “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Freedom, for him, had a purpose and end, a “telos.” We are freed not to do whatever we feel is best for us individually, but instead to love our neighbors.
We therefore have obligations to others, even obligations that we do not willingly choose. Our personal preferences and maximal autonomy must be set aside for the sake of loving our neighbor and for the common good.
It’s rarely admitted aloud but asking someone to seek the good of others is often a call to suffering in one degree or another. When pro-lifers ask a mother to carry a baby to term, they are asking her to take up inconvenience, sorrow, financial strain and pain on behalf of another. […]
How do you call a society committed to personal freedom and happiness to bear the burdens of others? Most of us intuitively grasp that there’s more to life than living for oneself and one’s own happiness or comfort. But we lack a positive vision for the purpose of individual liberty.
Thomas Aquinas, a medieval Catholic theologian, gave us the gorgeous and helpful phrase “arduous good.” “An arduous good is a good that requires struggle,” Ron Belgau wrote in a 2013 article for First Things, “a good that is worth fighting for. And a good that inspires fear and hope and endurance in the face of adversity. ‘Arduous good’ is also a phrase that is seldom spoken in Hollywood, and almost never heard on Madison Avenue. In that silence, the poverty of our culture is laid bare.”
Consumer capitalism is not going to teach us about how to pursue arduous goods, nor is technological progress, nor is either American political party. Theoretically, religious communities are places that train us toward ends other than individual autonomy. They point us to something bigger and higher than ourselves, calling us to love God and our neighbors. However, this is unfortunately not always the case. Many religious communities have lost their ability to articulate an alternative to the sovereignty of personal choice and individual autonomy.
Christian churches have often imbibed the same overarching commitment to personal choice. The dogma of maximal individual freedom often trumps whatever other dogmas we may confess each Sunday.
But as a culture, we desperately need religious communities that do not parrot the predictable ethical arguments of the right or the left. We need a rooted and robust call to love our neighbors, our families and the marginalized, the needy, the weak and the afflicted among us. Individual liberty is not a bad political starting point, but it’s inadequate to orient our lives. We need other stories that teach us how to live justly and wisely in the world, that lend us a vision of positive liberty, that show us what freedom is for.