Freedom v.s. Freedom

[varrin]

I need help. I need to find two different words to contrast two different ideas. Both ideas are best described as freedom, however, both are different and, depending on your interpretation, contradictory. For now, I'll briefly describe the two ideas using modifiers for clarity.

Political freedom means not being coercively subject to the rule

Comments

[maineshark]

What you're describing is a "subset" of general freedom.

As long as all members of a group freely choose to be members, the rules of that group can be as minimal or total as they like, and it's still freedom, because of the free choice to be a member.

Freedom, in general, is the ability to exercise one's rights without being coerced to stop by others. Also known as "libertarianism."

I think that, as long as you define your term, "Christian freedom" appropriately, it works fine (eg, "the freedom for members of Christianity to do anything not prohibited by that religion's doctrines"). As long as the definition is clear that this only applies to Christians, most anyone in the liberty spectrum should understand what you're getting at.

You could also use the morality/ethics must/should dichotomy to help explain. You must not murder some innocent guy walking down the street; that's morality. You should not kill someone who attacks you, if you can reasonably stop him without killing him and without causing future danger to yourself or others by doing so; that's a personal ethic that I hold.

Morality can be enforced on others, so it is necessarily minimalist, essentially being a restatement of the principles of self-ownership and non-aggression. Ethics can only be enforced on ourselves, and those who share the same ethic. Christianity says that idolatry is unethical behavior, so one Christian can 'enforce' that on another Christian, because they share the same ethic, but would be acting wrongfully if he chopped down a Native American's totem pole, since Native American's follow a different ethic in regards to idolatry.