"Do you think being a Christian has more restriction on freedom than your non-Christian friends?"
When we talk about freedom, let's consider in two levels. Firstly regarding our culture and our beliefs. Do we really have a choice on these? Let's not think too deeply and assume we are free and have chosen to believe in something, including religion. Then it comes to the second stage of freedom, which is whether we can act what we choose to.
What we want to do mainly depend on our beliefs. Beliefs does not restrict you from doing something, i.e. does not restrict your freedom, because what you want to do is basically base on your beliefs. It's not like law. Most of the time law is not what we believe, or even we believe the concept, we have different understanding on the punishment. Therefore law is the second order of reason, it restrict our action as a set of outside mean. Being a Christian itself does not restrict you from doing anything, it's mapping your mind on Jesus' mind make you decide to do something or not to do something. For example if someone never thinks killing people is a problem, he would think telling him not to kill is a restriction of his freedom; but once he believes that it is part of the human nature, i.e. he believes that killing people is against his nature, then "Thy shall no kill" is not a restriction of freedom. Instead it is his choice to not killing.
So a Christian would not be more restricted on freedom than a non-Christian, because their beliefs should be different. Conceptually the question is not matching this theological idea already. It is implanting an idea that "Christians cannot do something that non-Christians can do because we are Christian" to whoever is being asked. The right idea should be "Christians have different judgement on good and bad because we believe different doctrine and therefore we have different idea on what we can do and what we can't".
I agree with your idea of "what you believe in has no restrictions on what you can or cannot do", since I believe that "Freedom" shouldn't be tangled with religion.
ReplyDeleteI think the real "restriction" lies on the boundary of decision making and evaluation. Believers of a religion will tend evaluate a decision based on what they believe is right, making use of their religious context. Non-believers would most likely evaluate based on their own standards or what existing standards there are among the society.
A religion will affect the probability that a particular decision might be made. Take for example, if a religion tells you that you shouldn't eat pork/beef - you can still eat pork/beef since you are still free to control your own actions - but are you likely to do so based on what you believe (and assuming you are a firm believer)?
Most commonly, you will find that people will say "I can't do this because I believe in xxxx", "I can't do that because my xxxx religion says so". This is what makes people think a religion is affecting someone's freedom. It is not so much to do with freedom, but rather what decisions they like to make.
No doubt you would have come across similar issues with yourself or other people during your 26 years on Earth =)
Another point to note...
ReplyDeleteWhat most commonly affects people views on freedom is due to over-restrictive religious organizations. Might be less common in the 21st century, but I'm pretty sure that if you won't have much 'freedom' if you belong to a religious organization back in the old days (pre-20th century, maybe 16th~?), since you would be prosecuted by the group if you did something against them.....
When people say "I can't do this because I believe in xxxx", that means they have completely no idea why are they not doing that.
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