Keep the Faith: Obedience to the law is liberty? - Yahoo News
Above the entrance to the former Worcester County Court House on Lincoln Square is a phrase: “Obedience to the Law is Liberty.” I’d driven past the building hundreds of time, reading the phrase without paying too much attention to it. Like many of you, I suppose, it just registered as an appropriate saying for a hall of justice. I was driving past it one day with an older man who was a regular visitor to Worcester. He looked up at the words and remarked on their deep meaning. I listened. Coming from a place where the rule of law had disappeared and liberty was a distant memory, the words touched him. He began in his way to unpack them. I have never been able to pass that Court House again without reflecting on the phrase.
The three fundamental words in the saying are: obedience, law, and liberty. Each has a long history in human thought. They shape how we see ourselves and others, and how we formulate society and nation.
Obedience comes into English from Latin. The obvious meaning is to comply to an order given. Its root, however, is different. It has to do with a listening toward understanding. Implicit is a conversation, perhaps one sided, but nonetheless requiring a little back-and-forth. So, really, “blind obedience” is an oxymoron; you’re supposed to understand why you should do what you’ve been directed to do. Freedom lies at its foundation.
Law is a touch more complicated. For as long as people were given to thinking, they noticed that ideas of right and wrong are innate, even toddlers are aware of it. Spiritual and philosophical traditions developed theories around this phenomenon of a basic universal sense of law and justice. As societies became more sophisticated a debate centered around whether laws were created (by rulers or legislatures) or discovered through spiritual wisdom.
There were great “law-givers” such as Hammurabi, or Solon, who wrote and codified law. On the spiritual side one of the first who comes to mind is Moses, also called “law-giver,” but who received the Law by revelation from God. Regardless, there was general agreement that the basic sense of law was hardwired, and in the conscience.
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source: https://news.yahoo.com/keep-faith-obedience-law-liberty-100123308.html
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