Themeattics

Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can’t. If a thing is free to be good it’s also free to be bad. (…) Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk.

C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity

America is in a weird place these days. I don’t care what side of the political spectrum you’re on, you’ve noticed it. If you pay any attention, you’ve felt the strain, the steadily increasing tension that’s been threatening to snap with greater and greater force as time goes on.

Despite being very political myself, I told myself to stay out of politics here. One, it’s much too easy to crank out cynical, boisterous garbage to try and appeal to one side or another and get attention. Two, there’s already too much of that in the world clogging up people’s thought processes. Three, politics is just a symptom of greater desires, and I think those are far more important to address. There are more reasons, but those are good enough to get the point across. Now, that’s still the plan, so bear with me if this one seems to veer in that direction, but I guess it’s kind of impossible to avoid it when it seems everything in our lives has become political.

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July. This past week, every time I got on social media I saw one person or another using the approaching holiday to jab at the other side of the aisle over some aspect of America. Systemic racism, the destruction of values, perceived attacks on election integrity from both ends of the spectrum. Just a lot of attacks, always. Let’s take a step back here and understand what the day is about. What, exactly, are we meant to celebrate on the Fourth?

Is it the war against a distant ruling class that resulted in our separation? Is it the bleak history of subjugation and violence created as the country expanded? Is it the space race? The assistance in defeating a brutal, expansive regime across the pond? The fact we went to war with ourselves to start fixing internal oppression? Is it the old institutions, or maybe the new ones? The founders, the Greatest Generation, the revolutionaries, or the capitalist magnates?

Yes. No. It’s all of it yet none of it. What we’re here to celebrate is the central idea that underlies everything we’ve done: freedom.

I can hear some of you rolling your eyes, but bear with me. Freedom is lauded all over the world. It’s an understood ideal that dictators give lip service to and politicians vomit out every other line. We’re expected to love it, to appreciate it, to want it. But as I’m looking over the state of things, I’m not sure we know what it is anymore.

Humanity loves putting things in neat little boxes and slapping a label on them. We take a situation and all of its nuances and tuck it away, coating it with our patented broad brush and are convinced we don’t need to think about it anymore. America has an absolutely shit history of race relations between white and black people. Garbage country, needs to be uprooted and reformed, label applied, moving on. America helped bring about the modern age of technology and peace. Awesome country, ten of ten, label applied, moving on.

You know what actually did those things? People. Free people. You see, freedom is messy. Mankind is fallen, and given the ability to do what they want, you can never predict the outcome of each individual. Freedom is the grand social experiment, a tossed confetti of chaos into a hurricane. Bad people will do bad things. Uncertain people will be led down dark paths. There will be violence. Fear. Pain. People will get hurt. They’ll die prematurely. They’ll kill, brutalize, and exploit.

And they’ll save. They’ll uplift, give, and love. They’ll invest their lives into curing natural diseases, they’ll bring humanity to the stars, they’ll take care of the weak and needy.

That dichotomy, that singular essence of humanity, that’s what we celebrate on the Fourth. We celebrate our decision to take a chance on humanity at its most granular level, not forcing conformity to the ideals of a small few. Have we strayed from that path? I certainly think so. I expect a lot of other do as well – my generation is horribly cynical after all – but so what? That’s not what we’re here for.

Tomorrow, I’ll be taking my kids out to watch a display of unnecessary destruction crafted to show beauty. It seems like the perfect way to celebrate that dichotomy to me. And when I do, I’ll talk to them about the why. About what it means to be free, the responsibilities that come along with it, and the dangers. About what it means to be a steward of humanity. We could use a few more of those these days.