Author: Carmelo Santos

Are we free?  Are we truly free?  Or is freedom a mere illusion, a convenient fiction, a lie we tell ourselves to make our condition more bearable?  That centuries old question is been revived today in part by discoveries in the field of behavioral genetics.  The mapping of the human genome (i.e. the sets of instructions that we carry in our cells) presents us with a crisis in meaning, a crisis in our understanding of what it means to be a human being, with repercussions in all aspects of life, from medicine to jurisprudence to theology.

But a crisis, as is often repeated, is also an opportunity; a crisis constitutes an opening, a break with something (the end of one thing) and therefore the potentiality of the beginning of something new.  We are in the midst of a crisis of what it means to be human, and that is scary and exciting, dangerous and full of possibilities.  We are in uncharted terrain, in a new place, and according to the perspective of faith, it is the Spirit of God that has brought us to this place.

We are free to create or destroy.  We are free to surrender our freedom to the suicidal compulsions of greed, to the satisfaction of our ephemeral but bottomless whims.  We are also free to use our freedom to enhance our capacity to choose life-giving ways of being in the world and of being in relationship with other humans, with other creatures, with ourselves, and with our God.  Rubem Ales, a Brazilian theologian and psychoanalyst, has used the metaphor of the kite to describe the paradox of human freedom.  Without the string that pulls it down, the kite cannot fly.  Without the wind that pushes it in the opposite direction, it cannot fly either.  The kite can only fly when it is simultaneously pulled down by the string and pushed up by the wind.  Humanity is certainly constrained by its genome but it is also pushed to transcendence by the Spirit that blows from within the ground of our being.  Thus the human spirit soars in freedom.  We are made to be free.

We are free to become what God is calling us to be, or not.  We are free to participate in God’s ongoing work of creation which includes ourselves.  In Christ we are given the freedom and courage to become who God is calling us to be.

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