Yes, actually frees.
As opposed to, you know, those modern-design modes of big, ambitious, DYNAMIC love, of which we find no little evidence in the Great Global World today. The sort of bold, take-charge loves - whether erotic/sexual, interpersonal, operational, economic, political, progressive, global, etc - wherein we find ourselves so drivenly invested in, say, the progress, or the transformation, or even the perfection of the beloved, that we seem to be offering them just about everything they could ever . . . not want. Or, to put it more directly: everything they could ever want, except freedom. And in particular the freedom to be just themselves. And nothing but themselves. So help us God.
Which aggressive charity also, by coincidence, just happens to be the kind of love that makes Us Knowing Ones more emotionally secure and self-assured. And persuaded of our own rightness, or Right-Side-of-Historyness, or whatever. Never mind, of course, about the diminishing effects it may have on the security and confidence of those we love. Or at least try, and strain, to love. After all, if they are in some key operational sense our inferiors (at least for the provisional time being), it may be asked: What right do they have to a security and confidence even remotely on a par with ours?
Still I wonder, is it possible for anyone - even for Us - to be too confident? To be too sure of even Our Own good intentions? There are limits, after all, to the power (or even the benevolence) of any mere human manipulation, however superior its source. Imagine, then, if just for one day we took these loved ones, in whose perfection we are so drivenly invested, out of our own capable hands. And left them, say, in God's. Could we be as certain of their attaining, as quickly, that same utmost potential that's surely an ace-in-the-hole under our generous oversight? But now further imagine, we had no contact with them for one whole week. Or month. Or even for an entire year?
And now suppose that - unthinkable though it be, and a heinous breach of responsibility on our part - we were never to see them again. Granted, God remains in ultimate charge. And no doubt He will take care of them, after His fashion. Yet wouldn't He so much the more prefer to work through Us? And if not, then why on earth has He created us in His image?? More to the point, why has He empowered Us to be so much better - at least for now - than the ones we're trying to help???
Which brings me to what I think is the pivotal question:
Can we trust God enough to allow people their completest freedom from us - from our expectations, urgencies and agendas? From our desires and longings and lusts? And still enjoy, marvel at, be enraptured with the end product? But in particular when all the God-indwelt fulness of that freedom entails their souls' liberty, not just from our busy minds and wills and agendas, but from their own. And all the more so, it seems to me, when those same souls' utterly natural, unlabored breathing at last opens a portal to Something barely suspected, even from within their own hearts: A Love, graciously acting upon - and yet fully consonant with - their own free will, that actually enjoys our freedom too.
