Can’t have one without the others.

Readership: All
Theme: Community
Author’s Note: This post was inspired by Mogadishu Matt’s post, Freedom Isn’t For Idiots. Structure Is. (2024/7/7)
Length: 400 words
Reading Time: 2 minutes

The popular notion of freedom is doing whatever one feels like doing.  But this is lawlessness, not true freedom.

Another concept of freedom is akin to a self-sufficient hermit living off the grid. Still, although his self-determination may be unfettered by the constraints of society, his potential and sense of fulfillment may be limited.

I posit that freedom, properly understood, is having good opportunities to reach one’s potential.

Contrary to the DIE propaganda, potential is different for different people.

In general,

  • Men need to have fulfilling work.
  • Women need to actively participate in a family or community.
  • Working class individuals need a workplace where they can showcase their skills and receive compensation.
  • Professionals need a community to serve.
  • Brainiacs need a think tank where their ideas will be taken seriously.
  • Upper class / leader class stiffs need a people to lead.
  • And so on.
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When people cannot attain their human or God-granted potential, freedoms are routinely curtailed.

  • When men cannot find jobs, run a business, or earn more than subsistence wages, then that means less economic freedom.
  • When men cannot own a home or have a family, then they have less social freedom.
  • When people cannot participate in the governance of their community / nation, then they have less political freedom.
  • When men are stuck in circumstances that perpetuate sin, then they have less spiritual freedom.
  • And so on.

Moreover, people need a community to function at their fullest life potential that is possible in a broken world. However, the freedoms of people living in a community must be regulated to ensure that one person’s freedoms do not encroach upon another’s.

This is where structure becomes important, and also, a structure of authority that everyone can conform to, by faith.

Social structure provides a venue in which all the people can find identity, meaning, and their place in society.

Structure provides the framework for freedom to exist. Without structure, society unravels into chaos which curtails freedoms.

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