What most people do not realize is that Liberty exists in two modes, negative and positive. These are not moral qualifiers but relational modifiers. Negative Liberty is liberty away from something while Positive Liberty is liberty of having something.
We can speak of really awesome ideas, liberty from a society steeped in systemic sexism, in terms of negative liberty. We can speak of really horrible ideas, liberty of being a sexist a**hat, in terms of positive liberty.
Generally, however, negative liberty is an expectation out of social obligation while positive liberty is an expectation towards a social obligation. If I am an employer who wants the liberty to not provide equal pay to men and women for the same work than I want the liberty from that social expectation. If I am a female employee who wants equal pay for equal work then I want the liberty of a fair wage, of a social obligation.
Today let us consider Christ to be Lady Liberty, that it is indeed Lady Liberty's skin harshly tanned in the desert, her stomach clenched in hunger amidst the sand, the refreshing rivulets of the Jordan water that had caressed her skin and filled her now parched throat at baptism so far removed to hardly be a memory. It is to her that the tempter does come to place in the midst of trial.
And so our Lady Christ comes upon her first temptation. There is the liberty of the natural order, that which divides flora and fauna, that which is organic, from the minerals and rocks, that which is inorganic. Our Lady Christ can easily take liberty from this rule, such is in her capacity, disrupt the natural order, and destroy the lines between the inorganic and the organic. Our lady does not do so. She recognizes the freedom allowed to all on account of the natural order. That liberty is one she wishes to maintain for all, not destroy for her momentary hunger. She, our Christ, chooses to maintain the freedom of our relationship with the created world.
Lady Christ then is taken to readily view all the empires of the world. There is a liberty of association that has been given to humanity, not that we have oft used it well. Still that liberty is there and the potential it gives us is inherently important for us to be who we are. For Lady Christ this liberty we have is a burden to her work. It means she must build friendships, change minds over time, be swarmed by mobs that want to use and abuse her, and often be dismissed as a wandering peasant rabbi. Would it not be easier, perhaps, for Lady Christ to just be the Ultimate Empress? To forgo all the slow process of building relationships and just force us to her will for our betterment? This for her would be a liberty from so much that hinders her work in this world but she holds to maintain for all the liberty of association over the easy path of force and submission that strips away such freedom. Our Christ, in her wisdom, maintains the freedom of our relationship with each other.
The tempter is not finished with our Lady Christ at that point, however, for her he has one more exchange upon the height of the temple. There Lady Christ is tempted to remove all doubt about God and who she is from the high priest and leaders of the Jewish people. To strip from them any space for doubt, any contrivance of choice, any concept of belief, and turn both her space in the divine metaphysic and that of God into a singular point of knowledge. The end of questions about who she is and the very existence of God would be a boon to our Lady Christ. This movement from the freedom of our relationship with God to one of absolute obedience through direct unfiltered knowledge would bring an end to her work, but also an end to something pivotal from before our creation. Rejoice then that she, our Christ, chose to maintain the liberty of our voluntary relationship with God.
And so the Temptation of Lady Liberty comes to an end. With the liberties allowed us by our relationship with creation, each other, and God in place. With the destruction that would result in a movement from said liberties, regardless of how readily such might at the moment ease her work, kept at bay.
None of us have the capacity that Our Lady Christ had that day when confronted by the devil. We cannot break the very fabric of the relationship humanity has with the created order, the whole of humanity, or God. We can ask ourselves, however, are we seeking to be in the midst of the liberty of those relationships or seeking to be in the midst of liberty from them. We can ask are we moving towards the space that Our Lady Christ choose that day or are we moving to the space she rallied against.
As we contemplate this lent and this election season on what and whom we should vote for we must consistently ask ourselves if we are seeking to be in the midst of proper long term relationships with creation, with each other, and with God in the choices we make or are we simply seeking freedom from those relationships as they may easily serve our immediate needs, wants, and and goals.
What this means, however, is that we must at points speak out against forms of liberty that would break those relationships. Liberties many seek to destroy and corrupt creation. Liberties many seek to subjugate, oppress, and lessen the capacity of others to be in the midst of the human relationship as equals beings. Liberties many seek to destroy individuals ability to enter into doubt, curiosity, and belief into God and replace it with an obedience to a certain subset of interpretations about what God may be held by only certain Christians. It means we must be bad, even more than a wee bit naughty, and fight against the implementation of these liberties within our social order.
The temptation of Lady Christ, of Jesus Christ, ended many centuries ago but our entering into the choices that Jesus made there, or going against them, perpetuate to this day. We can choose to follow Jesus in seeking to fully bring about the liberties of our relationship with creation, each other, and God or follow the tempter and seek to be free from them. I pray that as we again elect our leaders we will not elect those whose platform is based on seeking freedom from this core obligations we should hold and in so doing bring away from Jesus and towards the will of the tempter.
This is why we need to rally around those who speak for the Liberty of Living Wages, Liberty of Education, Liberty of Health Care, Liberty of Housing Security, Liberty of Employment Security and why we need to walk away from those who seek Liberty from providing Living Wages, Liberty from providing Education, Liberty from providing Health Care, Liberty from providing Housing Security, Liberty from providing Housing Security. Jesus called us into creating a community that is based on the Liberty of Love, not the Liberty from Loving, and that is the form of society that we are called to create as Christians. This is why it is the obligation of every Christian to vote, to create a society that emboldens the Liberty of our relationships to creation, each other, and God, that where we love our neighbor as ourselves and by so doing enter fully into Love of God.
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