Quotes about Freedom

We sometimes use the term "savior complex" to describe an unhealthy syndrome of obsession over curing others' problems. The true Savior, however, seemed remarkably free of such a complex. He had no compulsion to convert the entire world in his lifetime or to cure people who were not ready to be cured.

Though forgiveness is never easy, and may take generations, what else can break the chains that enslave people to their historical past?

But what if I create a universe that is free, free even of me? What if I veil My Divinity so that the creatures are free to pursue their individual lives without being overwhelmed by My overpowering Presence? Will the creatures love Me? Can I be loved by creatures whom I have not programmed to adore me forever? Can love arise out of freedom? My angels love me unceasingly, but they can see Me at all times. What if I create beings in My own image as a Creator, beings who are free? But

Only forgiveness frees us from the injustice of others.

Forgiveness—undeserved, unearned—can cut the cords and let the oppressive burden of guilt roll away.

Jesus did not identify the person with his sin, but rather saw in this sin something alien, something that really did not belong to him, something that merely chained and mastered him and from which he would free him and bring him back to his real self.

Not even God, with all his power, can force a human being to love.

Although Jesus' prayers do not offer a foolproof formula, they do give clues as to how God works — and does not work — on this planet. Especially when trouble strikes, we want God to intervene more decisively, but Jesus' prayers underscore God's style of restraint out of respect for human freedom.

Jesus' prayers for Peter — and perhaps for Judas as well — express God's unfathomable respect for human freedom.

King clung to nonviolence because he profoundly believed that only a movement based on love could keep the oppressed from becoming a mirror image of their oppressors. He wanted to change the hearts of the white people, yes, but in a way that did not in the process harden the hearts of the blacks he was leading toward freedom. Nonviolence, he believed, 'will save the Negro from seeking to substitute one tyranny for another.

Lewis Smedes points out, "The first and often the only person to be healed by forgiveness is the person who does the forgiveness. . . . When we genuinely forgive, we set a prisoner free and then discover that the prisoner we set free was us.

Democracy requires us to recognize others' rights even when we fundamentally disagree with them.