Freedom in vocation

Freedom in vocation

Thanks to Tickletext for citing in a comment this quotation from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Creation and Fall:

[Man] is free for the worship of the Creator. In the language of the Bible, freedom is not something man has for himself but something he has for others. No man is free “as such,” that is, in a vacuum, in the way that he may be musical, intelligent or blind as such. […] Freedom is not a quality which can be revealed–it is not a possession, a presence, an object, nor is it a form for existence–but a relationship and nothing else. In truth, freedom is a relationship between two persons. Being free means “being free for the other,” because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free.

This, of course, has to do with vocation, the purpose of which is to love and serve your neighbor whom God brings to you in your various callings (in the family, the workplace, the church, and the culture).

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