Rightfully, parents impose limits and restrictions on their children from some activities as a matter of love. Of course these limits and restrictions are based on the risk perceptions of the parents. However, as children age loving parents must teach and equip them for independence, for making their own decisions from their own perceptions of risk. It is not love for parents to continue seeking to limit and restrict their children as they reach adulthood.
Many of us who have passed through adolescence may have heard the expression, “If you love someone, let them go. If they return then it was meant to be. If not it wasn’t.” Of course this is meant to reduce the heartache when a relationship fails. It also reveals a tendency as a young person to “possess” and even limit and control the object of their affection. Often this attitude about relationships extends into adulthood. Many therapists and self-help books have sought to assist adults in growing out of “co-dependency” in relationships which is often the root cause of authoritarian attempts to control others in our environment.
Many people never grow into the understanding that love, indeed, does mean allowing someone to be free to make the choices they want for their lives, even if they believe their choices to be risky and could lead to harm. IT IS NOT LOVE for one adult to attempt to parent another. Every person has their own perceptions of risk. These perceptions change over time. Our risk tolerance when we are young changes as we age. That means that as we age the gap between our risk tolerance and that of younger people expands. Our experience and consequences of bad choices often grants us wisdom about what bad choices can lead to. Certainly, younger people would be wise to seek the wisdom of those senior to them but they rarely do. Sadly, too many feel that they are wiser than their parents or elders.
This impulse to limit and restrict the choices of other adults, of any age, based on our risk tolerance is not love. It is authoritarian. It is arrogant. It is immoral. Our experience, our moral values, our comfort does not entitle us to use force to limit or restrict other adults from their voluntary choices.
Love means protecting everyone’s right to make choices for themselves. Remember the first amendment to the Bill of Rights that protects free speech. Not all speech needs to be protected because it does not offend. It is only offensive speech that needs protection. Liberty is like that. Not all liberties need equal protection because not all liberties offend others. However, like speech, it is certain liberties that demand protection. Most importantly, the liberty to make our own choices for ourselves is LOVE.
God, Himself, gave humans their free choice at the very beginning. He did not act as an authoritarian to limit or restrict choices. Even Jesus taught us that there is no greater love than when someone gives his life for another. Love comes to life in the liberty to voluntarily choose to give your life for another. The truth is that we are even free to choose to self destruct, to risk total destruction of our bodies in any effort or activity that we choose. This is love.
Finally, each of us has a moral, natural right of sovereignty over our bodies, the labor of our bodies, the earnings from our labor, and the property purchased from our earnings. Love respects that sovereignty in others. Love maintains our boundaries against the claims of others. Yet Love is also the platform of generosity, of voluntarily choosing to aid and care for others, not from force but from liberty.