Freedom necessitates boundaries

Will adults in our society restrict their own freedom to promote children's welfare?

That's a question posited, in a wonderful interview in WORLD magazine, by David Tubbs, professor at The King's College, NYC. He's written a book that I'd love to read, Freedom's Orphans: Contemporary Liberalism and the Fate of American Children.

Tubbs examines "the great expansion of individual rights in American law over the past six decades" that came with little attention to their implications for children.

My favorite part of his interview elucidates the difference between positive and negative freedom. He reveals the enslaving consequences of undiscerning freedom:

The more widely known idea is "negative": It means "absence of restraint" or "the liberty to choose." But there's another idea of freedom, the "positive" notion. It means "self-governance." We can grasp this idea if we think of persons becoming "enslaved" to dangerous passions--such as drink, drugs, or pornography. This idea of freedom makes it easier, for example, to justify laws that ban the sale of addictive drugs (even though these laws restrict choice), because a person who becomes addicted is no longer "self-governing. ... Education promotes self-governance, and we don't let children choose whether they will be educated. Instead, we require schooling, because an illiterate person is radically dependent on others and therefore "unfree."

He also notes that religious observances, despite being alleged as oppressive, have, in the West, long been thought to promote positive freedom. He cites John 8:23, a crucial worldview passage by which Christians ought to live: "If you continue in My (Jesus') word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth and it will make you free." He then notes:

Religious observance helps many people to resist potentially destructive passions and impulses and therefore promotes their freedom.

Tubbs also differentiates between "classical" and "contemporary liberalism:"

Contemporary liberals tend to think that personal freeedom for adults is
presumptively more important than any competing social interest, including many
pertaining to the welfare of children. Classical liberals have a broader understanding of the public good and are less likely to accept such a presumption.

Another observation Tubbs makes is in regard to a wavering adult perception of children's vulnerability:

We no longer have religious exercises in public schools partly because the High Court has said that children who don't want to participate in the exercises can be "indirectly coerced" into participating. To accept this theory of "indirect coercion," we must assume that children are psychologically and morally frail. That is a broadly accurate characterization of children, but the Supreme Court should be consistent in applying it. When, for example, the Court decides cases in which adults assert free-speech rights to pornography and children are exposed to such images, the Court usually depicts children as morally sturdy and somehow "inoculated" against pornography. This is a huge inconsistency in First Amendment law."

As we consider the notion of homeschooling our kids, we regardless face with certainty our responsibility to define the pooklet's freedoms as he gets older. Likewise, it is incumbent upon us to consider the implications of a biblical worldview as we engage our culture. I struggle daily with presenting the winsomness of the gospel (and the worldview it creates), because it requires confrontation with the sin we're all loathe to part with, namely the pride of presumed rights and deservations (if that's a word). There is always a beautiful view of life atop the mountain peak, but it's getting through the valley of difficult truths that's the hard part.