Freedom

It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life.  Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows.

For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself.  That's an act of true freedom.  If you bite and ravage each other, watch out - in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom me then?

My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day.  Why don't you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?

It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

   This isn't the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God's kingdom.

But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.

Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.

Galatians 5:13-26, The Message

Greatness

How do we rank the level of greatness between one person and the next? What leaders are greater than others? Are inventors ranked by quantity of inventions or by several more impactful ones? I was browsing wikipedia.org [a new favourite pastime of mine] and I ran into two lists. One was the "Greatest American" list, which was compiled in 2005 by the Discovery Channel by taking votes from American viewers. In 1978 the Top 100 "Most Influential Persons" list was published in a book by Michael Hart [b. 1932, NYC].

Here is the beginning of the "Greatest Americans" list:

1. Ronald Reagan, former President - 24% - named "Greatest American"
2. Abraham Lincoln, former President - 23.5%
3. Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights leader - 19.7% - named "Greatest African American"
4. George Washington, first President - 17.7%
5. Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father and scientist - 14.9%
6. George W. Bush, then President - named "Greatest Living American"
7. Bill Clinton, former President
8. Elvis Presley, singer - named "America's Greatest Entertainer"
9. Oprah Winfrey, talk show host - named "Greatest Woman in American history"
10. Franklin D. Roosevelt, former President
11. Billy Graham, evangelist
12. Thomas Jefferson, former President
13. Walt Disney, founder of Disney
14. Albert Einstein, physicist - named "Greatest American Scientist" and "Greatest Jewish American"
15. Thomas Alva Edison, inventor

Perhaps this list is less biased, as many persons' input formed one cognitive list. However, this would require each individual voter to consider all the nominees and rank them, and then vote on his or her "top American." This list does not prove that Elvis Presley was a greater American than Franklin Roosevelt, just that there are more Elvis fans than FDR enthusiasts. Surely Elvis shaped our culture in the 1950s, but aspects of Roosevelt's New Deal are still in operation today. I think that this list shows not each nominee's "greatness," but the number of Americans who were most affected by that person.

Here are Michael Hart's top 15 "Most Influential Persons":

1	Muhammad	Founder and main prophet of Islam, conquerer of Arabia, political figure
2	Isaac Newton	physicist, theory of universal gravitation, laws of motion, major developments in mathematics, optics, thermodynamics
3	Jesus	central figure of what would become Christianity
4	Buddha	founder of Buddhism
5	Confucius	founder of Confucianism
6	St. Paul	proselytizer of Christianity
7	Ts'ai Lun	inventor of paper
8	Johannes Gutenberg	developed movable type and made great advances in printing
9	Christopher Columbus	explorer, led Europe to the Americas
10	Albert Einstein	physicist, relativity, Einsteinian physics
11	Louis Pasteur	scientist, pasteurization, Germ Theory
12	Galileo Galilei	astronomer, accurately described heliocentric solar system, led way to Newton's work
13	Aristotle	Greek philosopher
14	Euclid	Greek mathematician, Euclidean geometry, author of various influential theories
15	Moses	major prophet of Judaism and leader of Israel

This list is the product of one man's research into the history of the world and into the influence that these persons still have in the world today. And how do we define influence? Is Mohammed ranked higher than Jesus because there are more Moslems in the world than Christians today? Should Confucius be ranked higher because his influence is most clearly seen within the country with the highest population?

Many of these men influenced only one area; should the list be broken into certain spheres of influence? Should we group Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, Confucius, Paul, and Buddha together because of their influence on world spirituality and religion; T'sai Lun and Gutenberg together for their impact on world literature; Newton, Galileo, Euclid, and Einstein together for their help in understanding the world around us?

And can we consider chronology as well? T'sai Lun invented paper; several centuries later Gutenberg invented the printing press. Without paper, there would be no need for print, so whose influence is greater? Galileo's work led to Newton's work which led to Einstein's work - whose was more important?

15th century explorer Vasco da Gama was ranked #86 on this list. Do the Portuguese-speaking people of Brasil consider him more important than everyone else on the list? Have we considered that the men on this list may have differing rates of impact geographically?

It seems that my questions might be answered if I were to read this book [which I will probably do at some time within the next...5 years, so I'll do that and see Mr. Hart's opinions on greatness.

Clearly "greatness" is a very subjective matter when speaking about a person's influence. Does one good deed surpass several others on a scale of "greatness?" Perhaps we should each re-arrange these two lists according to our personal tastes and thoughts on these figures' works. Give me your input.