Freedom

Christ has come to set us free from the chains of slavery to sin. Jesus said, “If the Son shall make you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36)  I could not imagine the hurt and depression that would fill our world if there were not millions of people who have come to understand the reality of the redeemed life that come through faith in Christ.

I grew up in an America where freedom was precious and liberty was the focus of why we “went to war” on battlefields of guns and tanks, and battlefields of ideas, and battlefields of political viewpoint. But, America has changed. While we still find ourselves engaged with rockets and IED’s, we seem to be in the process of abandoning our will to battle in the arena of ideas, and political fanaticism. We have moved away from the stirring emotion of “give me liberty, or give me death,”   to the damning emotions of “give me comfort regardless the cost,” “peace at any price”, and “take my liberty at your discretion, as long as it does not affect my vacation.”

We (seemingly, by-in-large as a Nation) are now, or have to a great degree, progressed through the same series of  “stages” made famous by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross when she described the conflict that our minds endure when someone we llove dies, or when we face the diagnosis of cancer and a prognosis of certain death.

 In the famous five stages of grief, there is a progression through denial, anger, bargaining and depression, and ultimately a kind of acceptance. For example, the first few times I took off my shoes at the airport (or put my shampoo and toothpaste in a “see through” plastic bag) I denied that this was really an intelligent person’s concept of how to catch terrorists. Then I got angry and complained a lot. I moved on to saying that I would no longer complain about the shoes if they would not make me unbuckle my belt and open the top button on my jeans, and soon came to a depression that this is what life had come to in America. Now, I have just accepted the fact that if I am going to fly to my destination, these things will be my reality.

I wish we could see that progression now in relationship to the value of ideas, or the twisted logic that actions which have never worked before to resolve our societal problems, are now going to magically fix the mess we have made because some elected official says so, or the foolish assertion that since we are no longer a “Christian Nation” the idea of God and His blessings on our grand experiment in representative Government is no longer necessary.

I believe we are well past the denial that this is the new reality. Many, if not most, have moved past the anger, and we are convinced that “bargaining” is gone with the winds of political change, and as depressed as some of us may be, we are beginning to accept that the “old” America, leading the free world to peace through strength, powerful, yet immensely benevolent, ensconced in liberty bought with the blood, sweat, and tears of its citizens, Christian, yet tolerant of other religions, and the “melting pot” where all who came — became Americans and there was no need for “multiculturalism,” is going, going, soon to be gone.

Will Heaven help us when we have run our course — as has every Nation before us? Oh, that wisdom might prevail once again in the the hallowed halls walked by those who founded our Nation, “conceived in liberty,” believing that we must “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” and that once again “we here highly resolve. . .that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”