Security vs. Freedom

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” -Benjamin Franklin

Want a simple, predictable, risk-free life? Simple: Choose security over freedom.

Security is another word for bondage — no matter how comfortable. It is an escape from the responsibility of freedom.

After suffering under the tyranny of the Pharaohs in Egypt for generations, the Israelites longed to be free.

But shortly after they were freed by Moses, they learned the harsh lesson that freedom comes with responsibility.

Exodus 16:3

“And the children of Israel said unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

They preferred to be fed and enslaved over being hungry and free. The irony is that, had they persisted in freedom (combined with personal responsibility), they would have been able to create far more food and wealth than they ever could have found in Egypt.

A life of security is clean, but mediocre and unfulfilling. A life of freedom is messy and mysterious, but extraordinary and exhilarating. To “return to your mother” is to embrace the messiness and majesty of choice.

Read the quotes below, then click the image above to continue.

“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.” -Edward Gibbon, on Athens

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!” -Patrick Henry

“The numbers of men in all ages have preferred ease, slumber, and good cheer to liberty, when they have been in competition. We must not then depend alone upon the love of liberty in the soul of man for its preservation.” -John Adams

“Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.” -Alexander Hamilton

“Life is not a problem to be solved; it is an adventure to be lived. That’s the nature of it and has been since the beginning when God set the dangerous stage for this high-stakes drama and called the whole wild enterprise good. He rigged the world in such a way that it only works when we embrace risk as the theme of our lives, which is to say, only when we live by faith. A man just won’t be happy until he’s got adventure in his work, in his love and in his spiritual life.” -John Eldredge in Wild at Heart

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” -Helen Keller

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.” -Susan Ryan

“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘WOW-What a Ride!’” -Robert Wickman

“What condition is more wretched than to live…with nothing to call one’s own, receiving from someone else one’s sustenance, one’s power to act, one’s body, one’s very life?” -Etienne de la Boetie in The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude

“It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life, and if it so monopolizes movement and life that when it languishes everthing languishes around it, that when it sleeps everything must sleep, and that when it dies the state itself must perish.” -Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America

“One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows from it. Each man learns to think, to act for himself, without counting on the support of an outside force which, however vigilant one supposes it to be, can never answer all social needs. Man, thus accustomed to seek his well-being only through his own efforts, raises himself in his own opinion as he does in the opinion of others; his soul becomes larger and stronger at the same time.” -Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America

“It may be that the human race is not ready for freedom. The air of liberty may be too rarified for us to breathe…The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.” -Steven Pressfield

“I’ve wondered…if one of the reasons we fail the acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don’t want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment. We don’t want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn’t remarkable, then we don’t have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims rather than grateful participants.” -Donald Miller in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

“I hate a Roman named Status Quo! Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantee, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that — shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.” -Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451

Click the image above.