Fear and freedom are always in tension. It isn’t obvious that there is a fixed, correct amount of either. The two exist as opposing impulses. One can easily erode the other. As fear decreases freedom increases, the available options open up. But that only makes sense if those options are relatively equally safe and productive. There are things we need to be genuinely afraid of, bad outcomes. And outcomes vary in quality, and even when the majority of available possible outcomes don’t lead to disaster (which seems to be the naturalistic assumption today), many outcomes don’t lead anywhere especially great.

   Because the world is challenging, we need other people as well as ourselves for our wellbeing. And losing what other people could produce or become isn’t a completely trivial matter (setting aside what they could produce negatively). But as it is not in our power to command what they must or should do or produce, it’s not clear how much of a right we have to intervene in their lives to ensure the greater collective good. That’s the thorny issue. What kinds of limits on freedom are appropriate to wield as deliberate actions of power against others, as hard power? As opposed to soft power; social valuation, positive reward, social censure, etc. That’s something we’re all going to do all the time as an expression of our desires, fears, and values. But it’s a whole different matter to codify those values and aims into deliberate structures of law and limits on freedom. 

    You can have a culture that values certain things and disapproves of others but that contains few actually deliberately designed limits on freedom in its law. Choices will still have consequences, but they will be emergent and socially enforced rather than legally enforced. Either nature, society, or law will push back on the limits of freedom (sometimes all three), but which you choose to wield, and how and when, will make a very big difference in how your society operates.

    Nature is the action of reality (whatever that is) in direct response to our own actions, and is largely beyond our control. But because we can manipulate and blunt those effects with technology, we cannot be said to be living in lockstep within the bosom of nature, with God himself as our guide. Nature can be tricked, cheated, manipulated, avoided. But in the end, in the very long run, it comes home to roost. So in the long run the action of nature wins and is the most concrete check on our freedom. But it is also the most implicit and least articulated and least obviously structured.

   Law exists at the opposite end, and social regulation (soft power) exists somewhere in the middle. But don’t imagine that all other levels of response are merely arbitrary. The action of society is the action of human nature, while law is a purely human construction, a kind of machine we have created. Law is not emergent but must be deliberately created, taught, and enforced. All three structures are useful tools, and all three must be respected.

    The most difficult choice, when deciding how we will regulate the demands of fear and freedom, is what domains to render to what gods to rule them? When to use the law, what to leave to society, and what to leave to God? And how to structure and define each.