Locke, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

“The natural liberty of man,” writes John Locke in his Second Treatise on Government, “is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule.”

My instinct is to come at that assertion from a strictly Christian perspective, arguing that of course, man is created to be subject only to God, not to man, but I quickly catch myself and consider to the contrary. Please join me in the following onslaught of questions, which I promise are intentional, and not as stream-of-consciousness as they may seem.

Two things about God’s creation of the world seem to me to prove that man was made to be governed. First, in the creation of man and woman, it looks to me that God established a form of hierarchy – Eve was created to be Adam’s helper, not his co-ruler-of-the-beasts-and-plants, so does that not, in a way, imply that she was subject to him? That her femininity was subject to his masculinity? (Dear feminists, please hold your tar and feathers!)

Secondly, both Locke and Hobbes assert that man’s natural state is in conflict with some other state of war or disorder such that societies and leaderships do inevitably form wherever groups of homo sapiens are gathered. Why should we believe that there are two opposing forces of “natural” and “war” rather than believing instead that it is the most natural to man to be ordered into a hierarchy?

What, furthermore, does Locke truly mean by freedom? We have, he says, the rights to life, liberty, and property (a phrase borrowed by the Declaration of Independence, but adapted from “property” to “pursuit of happiness). While his definition is that freedom means not being subject to any man, I would like to counter that maybe, given our apparently natural tendency towards disorder, freedom is, rather, what we have when we are subject to a just government, one which provides order.

Of course, what do I myself mean by just? Furthermore, does a government have freedom when it is subject to serving the happiness of the people? If a people are immoral, can they ever be happy? Does their immorality enslave them? Is our natural freedom to be disordered, or is our freedom derived from order itself, which better enables us to pursue life, property, happiness, and whatever else we might desire?

On Job and friendship in suffering

Everyone reads Job for its commentary on God’s sovereignty through suffering. I, however, would like to go against my first instinct to follow suit and instead take on a different project: examining what Job teaches us about being a friend to one who is suffering.

The thing about Job’s friends is that they were almost right. Their words were almost true (by true, I mean in agreement with God’s response to Job later on), and their actions, likewise, were almost comforting. They did, after all, come sit with Job, who had a contagious skin disease, in a pile of ashes, in total silence for a full week. How many of us have ever gone to such lengths to comfort one of our friends?

It seems fairly clear to me that Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Elihu truly had good intentions. They genuinely wanted to help Job in his suffering. But their monologues go awry, not only failing to be of any consolation to Job (or to persuade him that his self-righteousness is wrong), but also require penance, which God instructs Job to make on their behalf.

That penance, though, does not apply to Elihu. I have trouble determining, first of all, where the first three were in the wrong in speaking; and secondly, what made Elihu’s speech different. Were the trio wrong in browbeating Job for questioning God’s reasons for allowing his misery, or for chiding Job’s self-righteousness? Elihu did the same on both counts. Was it that they, in their own way, made the same misstep as Job in presuming to know anything about why God might have been treating Job as such?

This latter option seems likely (although I still don’t understand how Elihu differed). What, then, do we draw from this about how to stand, or sit in ashes, alongside our grieving friends?

First, the book of Job seems to discourage trying to explain God’s actions – in Job’s case, particularly, because the actions themselves were not God’s, but the devil’s which God allowed. (My corollary, however, is that we should not draw from Job that all bad things which befall us are from Satan, as I am more inclined to believe, as C.S. Lewis suggests in A Grief Observed, that some of our misery is at the hand of God in His role as the Great Surgeon. This, however, veers back into the topic of God’s sovereignty, which I may very well post on later, but is tangential to my project now).

I am undecided as to whether Job encourages or discourages correcting our friends should they take a faulty mindset towards their grief in the midst of it. But I am certain that above all else, we should be willing to sit with our friends in their ashes, mourning with them, even if they have boils, and even in silence.

On Psalms and context

I have always turned to Psalms when I need comfort. That, however, was before I reread the entire book in sections grouped according to theme for class. Suddenly I realized that not all the Psalms in which the author cries out to God express the sorrow of an individual, but of a nation – sorrow over its turning from God, of its exile from His good favor and its people from their land, over its war against other nations.

“The verse ‘Be still and know that I am God?’” my professor pointed out. “That’s one of the most quoted-out-of-context verses in the entire Bible.” She went on to show us that the command, in that case, is not for one person to meditate on God’s “I Am-ness” in silence, but for the tribes of Israel to cease their warring against each other.

It got me wondering, why do we recontextualize verses like this one (Psalm 46:10, by the way) to fit our circumstances in life? With what I’ve learned in the last week about the history surrounding the Psalms, I’m pretty sure that I’ve twisted a good quarter of the verses according to my moments of weakness or joy. Take Jeremiah 29:11, another frequently-quoted verse promising the beneficence of God’s plans; plans which, in context, are for the restoration of Israel following their time of captivity, but which we Christians apply to ourselves.

Is this habit we have of recontextualizing a problem? Or do the verses exist for that very purpose? Certainly, the majority of Scripture consists of verses whose truth would be destroyed if we used them incorrectly, for example, when renowned atheist writer Sam Harris quotes snippets of the Old Testament or of Christ’s metaphors to portray Christianity as religion that is bloodthirsty and bellicose. How is it any different, then, when we use verses that speak of David’s or Israel’s trials or triumphs as though they are speaking to us?

Maybe it’s that in doing so, we simply disregard the history, rather than completely mutating the verses into something they aren’t (as Harris does). God, after all, is great enough that He can speak to us even through misquoted, miscontextualized verses. But is that by way of our tweaking of their meaning, or in spite of it? Should we read the Psalms strictly for the sake of history, drawing comfort indirectly from the attributes of love and faithfulness that God showed the psalmists, or from cherry picking verses from which to draw comfort directly?

Let me introduce myself

Let me also introduce this blog.

I am opinionated, but this will not be my soapbox (as a general rule, though I may occasionally make exceptions).

I am an aspiring journalist, which will inform, but not dictate, the subjects and manner of my writing.

I am a student of literature, and I will sometimes analyze what I read in and of itself, and other times use the ideas I read as a lens through which I will examine "real life."

I believe that we have lost an appreciation for the art of asking questions. Answers, of course, are not bad, and I admire those who are able to produce them and enjoy doing so. But sometimes (often?) we exalt answers onto too lofty a pedestal, agreeing with them and adopting them immediately, without consideration or analysis. The purpose of this blog, therefore, is to serve an exercise for myself in discernment of ideas beyond face value.

I ask questions, rather than promising answers, for two reasons. First, because I have only 20 years worth of experience to speak from -- not to say that I discount my ability to think, but that I respect that I am still growing, and that I grow best by way of inquiry. Secondly, because I am not afraid that my questions will damage or undermine what is true.