Hagere and I were chatting yesterday about one of our favorite philosophers, Slavoj Žižek, and it reminded me of this post I wrote some time ago.

We can go on making our small choices, ‘reinventing ourselves’ thoroughly, on condition that these choices do not seriously disturb the social and ideological balance ” (Zizek).

There is a difference between “formal freedom” and “actual freedom“. Formal freedom is when we are permitted to make choices within a given system or ideology. Actual freedom is when we question the very structure that grants us formal freedom to the point of undermining its power over us altogether.

Perhaps, like me, you became tired of working within the system, constantly tweaking and reinventing and renovating it, because you eventually realized that we’ve already been doing that forever without any substantial change.

Perhaps, like me, you realized that you wanted real freedom, authentic freedom, actual freedom, and that the only way to do that was to throw the whole system into question by leaving it.

Perhaps, like me, your departure from the system was a testimony to your family and friends and the system you left that you believe it had failed and would continue to fail to create the culture of actual freedom.

I continue caring about the system, the church. I continue to raise my voice for it. I continue to believe that people can gather, like on The Lasting Supper, in healthy ways.