I haven’t seen Arthur Brooks’ documentary on the free market (The Pursuit) but I have followed his work at AEI and am currently reading (and enjoying) his new book Love Your Enemies. I have some traveling to do in this next month. Hopefully, that will give me time to see Brooks’ documentary. The takeaway for me from the review at …
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To be truly free means to do the will of God; nothing more and certainly nothing less.
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We tend to associate holiness with moral rectitude. A holy person is a virtuous person. While holiness and virtue are related, we often misunderstand the relationship between them. A saint is not holy because he is virtuous. Rather, he is virtuous because he is holy.
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When, as Orthodox Christians, we emphasize the importance of human freedom (and all the rights and privileges that we have come to expect as Americans) our concern is in defending is the ability of the soul to imitate either the Harlot or Judas. Human freedom is not for us an end in itself. It is rather for something.
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A “profitable” servant must also be of service to others. I must create value in the lives of neighbors. Just as in the marketplace, this means respecting their freedom. A profitable servant can’t compel others to accept his or her service. What is freely given, must be freely received (see, Matthew 10:5-8). This, in turn, requires that I offer my service to you freely (that is without coercion) that you freely received (or not) the offered service I would do for you.
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Because inner freedom–what the text refers to as the ‘freedom of soul’–is what matters, I might wrongly think that political or soul freedom is unimportant.
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Source (Cafe Hayek) The condition of freedom requires the courage to assume responsibility for one’s own actions and for the way one makes use of relevant knowledge, skill, and intelligibility to relate to others in mutually productive ways. Vincent Ostrom (1997), The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerabilities of Democracies.
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God doesn’t compel me, He woos me. God doesn’t just passively leave room for my freedom, my creativity, He creates the space, the conditions, for me to discover and exercise my freedom and creativity. And as God has done for me, I must do for you.
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Gratitude to God is not a feeling but an action. In the social dimension of human life, it is rather a matter of respecting the conscience of the individual. Such respect is no more important than when we disagree bitterly with each other.
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To be obedient means to live as a member of a community in which we work together for the flourishing, sanctification and salvation of each other. It is the end of mere individualism and the beginning of life patterned after the Holy Trinity.
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