Between Freedom and Responsibility — Like a Bridge over Troubled Water
I recently watched Episode 5 of Season 21 of Law & Order, titled “Free Speech.”[1]
It begins with the murder of a congressional candidate, pushed in front of a bus. The investigation leads to a right-wing media figure who had systematically smeared the candidate through false claims, fabricated narratives, and manipulated photographs, turning a political opponent into a mythical enemy. He even spoke of “neutralizing” him and rewarding those who took action. Someone did take action and neutralized the candidate!
The media figure’s defense? Freedom of speech and the First Amendment.
The prosecution saw something different. Had speech crossed the line from a protected freedom into responsibility for its consequences? As the prosecutor dramatically argued, this was like crying “fire” in a crowded theater—and someone had been trampled to death.
That episode left me thinking about a much older question:
Where does freedom end and responsibility begin?
Or, more precisely: Where does my freedom end and my responsibility to others begin?
To answer it, I started writing a Perspective article for the blog. However, after attending the Sunday Service at the First Christian Church (FCC) in Tyler, Texas, and listening to Pastor Chris Pulliam’s sermon, I realized this should be more of a reflective article than a socio-political one about the First Amendment.
What changed my approach was the pastor's masterful connection to the freedom in Christ we have as Christians, drawn from Romans 14, which I will also include in this reflection.
As Christians, we need to keep our lives centered on Christ rather than on what sells.
Coming back to the question, where does my freedom end and my responsibility to others begin? The fact is that this is an ancient question, one the Bible confronts almost from its opening pages.
In Genesis 4:8–10, after killing his brother Abel, Cain is confronted by God: “Where is your brother Abel?” Cain answers, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Like the media figure, Cain not only lies but, more importantly, hides behind a denial of responsibility. But there is one crucial difference: Cain himself committed the murder. In the Law & Order episode, the harder question is whether someone who did not commit the physical act can still bear responsibility for helping to bring it about.
Between Freedom and Responsibility in the Old Testament
The biblical trail between freedom and responsibility continues throughout both the Old and New Testaments. In Leviticus 19:9–18, God instructs Moses to tell his people that even when something belongs to someone, ownership does not absolve the owner of responsibility toward others. The landowner is commanded not to reap his field to its very edges, but to leave something for the poor and the stranger. The same passage warns: “You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people,” and culminates in one of Scripture’s great commandments: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The dictionary describes a slanderer[2] as someone who damages another person’s reputation through false statements.
Deuteronomy 22:8 takes responsibility one step further. When someone builds a house, he is commanded to construct a parapet around the roof so that no one falls from it. Scripture recognizes responsibility for foreseeable harm even when one does not directly cause it.
Jesus between Freedom and Responsibility
Jesus takes the commandment from Leviticus and places it at the very center of the Law.
When a lawyer asks Him which commandment is the greatest, Jesus answers that we are to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and then adds: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments, he says, “hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:34–40).
So far, the Old Testament and Jesus seem direct: love your neighbor.
Yet human beings have always been remarkably creative at discovering ways around responsibility. In Luke 10:25–37, another lawyer asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” When Jesus turns the question back to him, the lawyer correctly identifies the commandments to love God and neighbor.
But then comes a revealing sentence: “But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’”
There it is again—the search for the boundary of responsibility. Whom, exactly, am I required to care about? How far does my obligation extend?
Jesus answers with the Parable of the Good Samaritan. But by the end of the story, Jesus has subtly changed the lawyer’s question. The lawyer had asked, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus asks instead, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”
The question is no longer simply Who is my neighbor? It has become: What kind of neighbor am I? And that last command from Jesus is for all of us: “Go and do likewise.”
The New Testament carries Freedom and Responsibility further
Against the backdrop of biblical teaching and Jesus’ words, the New Testament further develops the notions. Saint Paul develops the concept of freedom, saying in Galatians 5:13: “For you were called to freedom... only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.” The instruction is simple, loud, and clear: freedom carries responsibility towards others.
Saint Peter reinforces the same principle: “As servants of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil.” (1 Peter 2:16).
Nevertheless, we live in a system where freedom of speech is a right guaranteed by constitutional law. Here again, some might hide behind the protection of the law and misuse it to their advantage. Couple that with the age of the internet, social media networks, and algorithms, which demand intrigue and sensationalism to carry a message.
In the name of freedom of speech, people can lie, build false narratives, hide facts, provoke, incite, and deceive. Social media algorithms feed those narratives to like-minded people, and before you know it, you are living in a bubble of fakeness and deceit.
This reality begs a question: “What is the limit to my freedom?”
Returning to the Law & Order episode, I paraphrase the media figure's defense: “It is what sells; it is what my viewers want to hear!”
It is true, to a media figure, “It is the clicks and the number of views that make his cash inflow and build the followership territory…” That translates into: this is my business and livelihood, and I must sell my customers what they want. I am only giving them what they want. I am therefore absolved of any responsibility.
Saint Paul criticizes this approach, where things fall into the murky waters of legal vs. beneficial. In 1 Corinthians 10:23–24, he says: “‘All things are lawful’, but not all things are beneficial. ‘All things are lawful’, but not all things build up. Do not seek your own advantage, but that of others.”
So New Testament evidence is also clear on this point: having a right does not settle how that right should be exercised.
In fact, Saint Paul, in Chapter 8:9–13 of the same letter, said, “But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling-block to the weak.” He goes on to describe how others with weaker consciences can fall prey to idol sacrifice.
Taking advantage of others in times of weakness of conscience is tantamount to sin against Christ.
Yes, freedom is real, but its effect on other people is also real and carries consequences—good and bad.
So what, or who, controls the line between freedom and responsibility?
In Romans 14:13–19, Saint Paul essentially says that one should not put a stumbling block before another; instead, one is to pursue peace and mutual upbuilding: “Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.”
That translates to the twenty-first century as responsible coexistence despite disagreement.
Saint James puts the relationship between freedom and responsibility even more concisely: “So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.” (James 2:12).
Christian liberty, therefore, is not freedom from responsibility; it is freedom exercised in the knowledge that both our words and our actions matter.
Given all the above, it is best to reiterate what Deuteronomy 22:8 says in another way. You didn't push the person from the roof. Nevertheless, Scripture says you have a responsibility to anticipate that your actions—or failure to act—can create conditions in which someone gets hurt.
In the case of the candidate for Congress in the Law & Order episode, the media figure not only failed to build a parapet on his roof, but also created the circumstances—through his lies and deceit—for someone else to go up on his show’s roof and push the candidate off it, killing him. The episode therefore asks whether the media figure, although he did not do the actual pushing, also bears responsibility for helping create the circumstances that led to the murder.
Perhaps Christianity's answer to “Am I my brother's keeper?” is not simply yes. It is something more demanding:
My brother's welfare is one of the things I must consider when deciding what to do with my freedom.
“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God. Give no offence to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, so that they may be saved.” (1 Corinthians 10:31–33).
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[1] Law & Order, Season 21, Episode 5, “Free Speech,” NBC, originally aired April 7, 2022.
[2] Cambridge Dictionary, “Slanderer.”
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