I recently had the privilege of hearing Moazzam Begg, a British man who was detained in Quantanamo bay, Cuba, and these were the words that remained with me most afterwards. Operation enduring freedom is the official name given by the US military for its contribution to the war in Afghanistan. The issue Begg brought up was how paradoxical this term was, freedom being something that every human being is born with the right to, something that can be taken from us as in the case of the Quantanamo detainees but freedom is not something that we need to endure. We endure pain, suffering and humiliation but we cannot endure freedom. (Ironically the original name of the operation was Operation Infinite Justice, but this was replaced on the grounds that it might cause religious offence). What could have been described as a quandary over semantics, struck me because of its significance as an idea and concept that we hold dear to us as members of supposedly ‘civilised’, western culture and as a Christian.

So much of how our society is built is on a basis of maintaining and protecting our personal freedoms. We have the right to free speech, to say and do as we like, within the limits of the law, to practise whichever religion we wish; even the right to own potentially dangerous firearms is protected in America. We assume we are free, that we own the definition of freedom and it is our duty to spread it to the rest of the world, which is not as fortunate as us. This, by the way, is pretty rich coming from a country which has enforced internment in the last 40 years, tried to do so again a lot more recently and works with countries which continues to do so to this day. But relatively speaking, unless you have been deemed a terrorist or enemy combatant, you’ve probably got things pretty easy freedom-wise. You’ve been able to choose to go to university and study the subject of your choice, this morning you will have chosen what to eat for breakfast, what clothes to wear, whether or not to attend your lectures.

And this is where it gets interesting, we do have freedom of choice in these matters, and yet so many people do the same thing, with, of course some notable exceptions. Count how many people are wearing jeans and trainers on campus today (myself included in that), or how many girls are wearing footless tights and scarves. I’m not going to go on a tirade about fashion industry (that’s a whole other article in itself) but I cannot help but wonder that if we are so free as we are lead to believe why do we still chose to do the same thing as everyone else so much of the time. If it is true that we are being controlled by what the media, our peers, and parents, ordain that we should do and look like how much free will do we actually have?

Then, of course, we get onto the religious aspect of things and probably one of the biggest questions of all, that is God knows everything about us from before we are formed in the womb and we have a ‘vocation’, be it in the clergy or as a lay person, how can anything we do be our own choice and merely not God’s puppeteering? I’m afraid that I am not able to answer that question in this article, or even probably a whole volume of books aided by the world’s greatest theologians and thinkers. It’s simply not something I can get my feeble little brain around. The only way that I think about this question is to acknowledge that I cannot reconcile the puppeteer God to the God that I believe in. I’m probably very wrong in this idea but my way of looking at it is that God does have a path for us and a life that He would like us to lead, the free will bit is whether or not we choose to follow this path and that maybe He knows which choice we will make because he knows us better than we know ourselves not because He makes it for us. I’m sure that they are probably many theological holes in this argument and many ways in which I could be tripped up by my own words but my personal justification for this is that surely if Jesus Himself, God’s own son, had a choice in whether to allow the crucifixion to happen even though it was why he was sent to earth, then we might have some choice in what we do.

‘My father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Nevertheless, let it be as you, not I, would have it.’ Matthew 26:39

Although He knew He would suffer Jesus chose to do His Father’s will instead of his own. Likewise we should choose to do what we think God would want us to do but we do still have free will and the choice of whether or not to do it.

So we have established that we do have free will, or at least that I think we do, so why still do we choose to do the same as everyone else? Perhaps it is because these pressures such as the media do not take away our freedom but do impinge on it by influencing the decisions that we make with it. There is a Gospel song that I have recently learnt which uses the refrain

‘Freedom is coming, freedom is coming, freedom is coming, oh yes it is”.

I was initially confused by this, thinking along the same lines as Moazzam Begg that freedom is something that everyone is intrinsically entitled to and already have, not something that we are yet to receive. I have since realised that the song may be referring to a type of freedom that comes from a pure relationship with God unaffected by the worries and restraints of the world. In this case Moazzam Begg was most certainly right when he explained that freedom was not something that we had to endure, be this the earthly freedoms with the right to do as we pleased and a greater freedom that I can imagine free from anything that we allow to interfere with our relationship with God. I don’t know if I’m right about what freedom or free will is, I have no way of knowing, but I guess you’re free to decide for yourself.