A longing for freedom is one of our most fundamental passions.  We long for freedom, to be liberated from the constraints of finitude—spiritual, mental, physical—and break into a higher understanding of what is real.  We long to make our will, our free will (at least as we see it), the sole and unchallenged arbiter of our truth and reality.  We want to be, as many writers have noted, and exist in a way that releases us from all constraint. 

   

 

So did Nietzsche set forth his Ubermensch, and so did Tom Wolfe, in Bonfire of Vanities, call his Wall Street protagonists "masters of the universe," people in total control of their worlds, their freedom limited only by their willingness to realize, guide, and further it.  There is nothing greater than them.  As Titanic director James Cameron remarked upon receiving the 1997 Academy Award for Best Picture, “I’m king of the world.”

But there is a problem.  It is the problem of God.  If God exists as a sentient and active and omnipotent being, acknowledging him as such means that we no longer have absolute freedom.  Sure, we can still do whatever we choose to do, but we now do so aware that we do so under the aegis of someone who will one day judge how we have used what has been given us.  Our entire life equation changes.

In addition, even if we do not believe that God exists, we must nonetheless understand that no one has unlimited freedom in a finite universe, much less a universe whose ultimate parameters are beyond her control.  Our freedom is merely the degree to which we believe ourselves to be free.  It has no genuine substance.

We therefore remain like the person in the Smashing Pumpkins song, “Even after I finished venting my rage, I’m still a rat yelling in a cage.”

So are we free?  Yes.  Are we free to be free?  Yes.  Are we free to be free to be free?  No.  Were we totally free to be free, we would never struggle with limits, never struggle with meaning, never struggle with the conundrum of evil.  To be free is to know and successfully wrestle (for we will always struggle) with what constrains it.  Only this is a freedom that makes itself free.  Any other freedom means nothing.