Argumentative Essay On Freedom Is Good

“Genuine freedom is an outstanding manifestation of the divine image in man. For God willed to leave man ‘in the power of his own counsel, so that he would seek his Creator of his own accord and would freely arrive at full and blessed perfection by cleaving to God.” God created and called us all to be perfect just as He is perfect. As the previous quote from the Catechism states, we arrive at perfection by freely seeking and cleaving to Him. The question, of course, becomes how? How does a human being strive to seek God and cleave to Him and reach this blessed perfection? The answer requires self discovery but is found in freedom rightly ordered by a good conscience that is grounded in moral Truth. Hardly anyone would deny that “freedom is good.” In Veritatis Splendor, Saint John Paul II even stated, “Certainly people today have a particularly strong sense of freedom.” Despite freedom’s elevated connotation, people differ in their understandings of freedom and, unfortunately, people often live according to an understanding of freedom which is not good. Inherently good freedom, or as the Pope terms this proper use of freedom ‘genuine freedom,’ is governed by a good conscience which is grounded in moral …show more content…
The flawed understanding states that we can act in any way “as long as we don’t hurt anybody else.” Yet, as we see with the predominant example of Eve’s choice to eat the bad apple, “…our actions have far-reaching effects we ourselves don’t always perceive…[and] ultimately everything we do has ripple effects across the community.” Thus, the view of freedom meaning doing whatever you please as long as it does no harm to others falls because if we cannot perceive the harm, how can we judge how to act freely? We can’t. To be authentically free, we need to live in accordance with a higher, transcendent truth that can perceive far reaching