Ultimate freedom removes all things into the public medium of Heaven, in whose perspective earthly publicity with its standards dwindles into irrelevancy. That is why, in primitive Christianity, confessions were public—or why, in later times, a St. Margaret of Cortona publicly accused herself of her sins from the top of her house.

The true Christian must see everything in conspectu Dei and lift himself above all terrestrial standards to the point of no longer according his dread of disgrace any part in his life. He must habitually remember that “one thing only is needful”: his obsession with Christ must be so powerful as to deprive such mundane concerns of all power over him.

Fear, in general, is one of the greatest enemies of our freedom—be it the fear of physical danger, the fear of poverty, the fear of incurring somebody’s hatred, the fear of becoming an object of people’s talk, or, above all, the fear of being doomed to sin in spite of all moral efforts. Of this last-named important variety of fear which is commonly referred to as scrupulousness, we need not treat here especially, as it has been discussed in Chapter 8 on “Confidence in God.”

Concern for human respect diminishes freedom

We shall pass now to a further type of unfreedom, closely akin to the one engendered by fear—the unfreedom due to what is currently termed human respect. This means, in particular, that we make our judgment of ourselves, and with it, largely, our mood, dependent on the impression we seem likely to produce on others, on the social image we believe we present. Two forms of human respect may conveniently be distinguished.

The first form is that which deserves a more severe censure. Here, it is a combination of pride and a sense of insecurity that causes the subject to base his appraisal of self on the image other people may have of him rather than on the picture of himself he may derive from his confrontation with God.

In the first place, therefore, he will be anxious not to appear stupid, crack-brained, backward, and in general, ridiculous in the eyes of others. Hence, in many cases, he will shrink from professing his faith before others, dread being seen in church, refrain from crossing himself at table in the presence of unbelievers, and so forth. This type of unfreedom is particularly obnoxious in a Christian. Of course, it will hardly ever occur in such blatant forms in the case of a person who has determined to follow Christ unreservedly; but in a more mitigated form, at least, it easily steals into anyone’s mental constitution.

Yet, the true Christian should be completely free from this pitiable dependence on the world. Knowing that Christ must be a “scandal to the world,” he should serenely endure being deemed by the world a fool, ridiculous, or narrow-minded. He ought never to forget these words of Christ: “If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore, the world hateth you” (John 15:19).