Modern society makes a sharp division between freedom and obligation, as though the two were in conflict; this division is largely driven by market ideology which treats people as though they were atomized autonomous individuals who only contract themselves into relationship--a view of the world that is clearly mythical; all one has to do is look around at real human relationships to see that this view is not realistic. It is only through the anonymity of market relationships that we can ignore the fact that we rely on other people for almost everything in our life; and thus we can think of our freedom as separate from our obligations—as though our freedom did not depend on other people, and other people's freedom did not depend on us. In other words, the modern market society allows us to pretend that one man's freedom is not another man's obligation. An easy way to demonstrate this is to simply think of the food supply; how free could you be had it not been for the countless people, relationships, and institutions that are required for you to put food your table.

"In the language of the Bible, freedom is not something man has for himself but something he has for others…. It is not a possession, a presence, an object,…but a relationship and nothing else. In truth, freedom is a relationship between two persons. Being free means 'being free for the other,' because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free."

Our birth inscribes us as beings-in-relation to others. But we do not always honor that birth or those relations. Historically we have tended to ignore that "debt toward that which gives and renews life," and approached others as mere objects to be appropriated for ourselves. Indeed, the immaterial separate God of many Christian theologies has helped conceal the infinite debt of our irreducibly material livelihood.