Freedom, Dignity and other Secondary Goods
In reading Free at Last?, I put down a few comments and thoughts along the way. At the end of chapter 9, which dealt with the goals of freedom and dignity, I wrote out the following:
As crucial as freedom and uninhibited expressions of dignity are to faithful out-workings of God’s truth and design, freedom and dignity themselves make poor gods. It is possible to idolize good, legitimate things, even absolutely crucial things.
But in such cases, those “good” things are distorted and corrupted, being dislodged from the God-honoring, God-centeredness of their design. In such cases, those “good” things are separated from the only source of goodness and life and have become empty shells of God’s design. Freedom and dignity are qualities that should be given to people as those in God’s image. They are descriptions of the condition that should characterize civilizations and societies. They are characteristics of full and functional life. But, as people were never designed to be God (we don’t “have life in ourselves” – John 8), we distort and corrupt freedom and dignity if we make them out to be ultimate ends and absolute goods, without due reference to God’s glory. We must see God’s glory and centrality and honor as primary, and pursue freedom and dignity (and all other good things) for the sake of God’s glory. The temptation can be to invoke “God’s glory” for the sake of freedom and dignity. A thorough concern for God’s glory will quickly imply real freedom and true dignity for man, His image-bearer. (A matter of keeping first things first.)
Here I would only add that none of this implies that we cannot work together for good ends with those who do not share our understandings of God’s glory and centrality. We can and should work for freedom, dignity, justice and mercy through any means available that do not violate other concerns of conscience. We must only maintain and help one another to strengthen our convictions for God’s glory. If we become more passionate about particular out-workings of freedom, dignity, justice and mercy than we are about God and His worship, then our vision and our work have gotten out of focus. We should work to sharpen focus, fuel a primary concern with God’s glory, to cultivate a mentality that remembers the best thing we can hope for anyone is that they know and enjoy God Himself, and we must work to promote things in alignment with His glory – like freedom, dignity, justice and mercy – wherever and however we faithfully can.
