Not so many months ago, world networks broadcast the news that the youth of Iran werefilling the streets of Tehran asking for reform and freedom. We watchcautiously as many nations in the Middle East and North Africa currently floodwith similar hopes and give of their lives and their comforts to attain similardreams. Voltaire claims, “Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.” I seemany free souls lining the streets of Libya, Bahrain, and Egypt, souls whohavebeen carried to greatness by their aspirations, but I don’t see many freebodies, and the blood in the streets in proof enough.
MartinLuther King, Jr., explained that freedom is never given voluntarily, but mustbe demanded by the oppressed. The sort of freedom King spoke of isinstitutional freedom—the freedom of a people to be and act as their souls are called.
While there are still gains to be made in this nation, I feel comfortable expressing that most Americans do experience a good amount of institutional freedom. I rarely feel that my country makes demands that are utterly egregious to my personal flourishing.
Watching the struggles that span the Middle East and North Africa, we who live in relative privilege may find ourselves awestruck. We may wonder aloud, “How do they get the strength?” or, “I wonder if I would risk my life, if I were in their situation?” Their bravery and their acts may seem strange, even alien.
I hope we will be guided, as a nation and as a people, by this key idea set forth by the nobel prize winning author Andre Gide: “To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom.” We nations that know freedom have the arduous task of determining what to do with our privilege. Do we ignore or encourage the work that our neighbors in humanity have begun? I pray we will choose to be a model for doing rightly and justly with our freedom. I pray we will model the arduous task of living into the responsibility that our freedom demands. Maybe when our neighbors emerge, if they emerge eventually with greater freedoms, they will do likewise.
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