Freedom

If Americans were asked which day of the year should be declared Freedom Day it would be July 4, not only for the work of the founding fathers but because it was on July 4, 1863 that the Confederate Army was defeated at Gettysburg after three days of fierce fighting.  It was the beginning of the end of slavery in America.  Even with all that may be said here about freedom, and the American dedication to it, we seem to little understand all that it is.  It is a virtue, even honored of God who is free, so determined to make persons free to enjoy as he enjoys life.  The virtue can be turned into a sin.  In simplest terms, persons turn a virtue into a sin when they attempt to keep it to themselves.  For example: freedom is lost or diluted when a group shouts down a person trying to use free speech; or picketing public meetings so to prevent others (perhaps through fear) from attending the meeting; or acting to bar recruiters from achieving legal purposes when recruiters are invited for good purpose (as in public or private life situations).  Peace should prevail.

It is unfair to use free speech to prevent free speech.  We should not use freedom of assembly to deny others freedom of assembly.  We should not use private force to prevent the freedom of the individual and society to function freely.  I am writing this just after two young men set off two bombs in Boston, on Boylston Street, at the close of the Boston Marathon in 2013.  These men, born in another land took oath to protect the freedom of the United States so to become loyal and free.  They violated the meaning of freedom, of their oath, and even the cause they might have represented by killing and wounding persons unrelated to their concerns.  In a matter of hours, one of the men was shot dead, and the other severely wounded.  He is being interrogated by authorities, and answering in written notes as his wounds preclude his speech.  What happened to freedom for the naturalized or free-born citizens of the nation?

Freedom for the two men meant aggression, and that aggression took away the freedom of a number of others, even leaving some maimed for life.  The lives of many persons are affected by such oddities of interpretation by persons playing god (godding) with other persons.  It occurs in the abuse of children, even of wives and husbands.  A woman has recently been jailed for abuse of her daughter whom she had designed as a means for impregnation (the first time at 14 years of age) when the mother could not have another child.  The daughter acknowledged the bizarre situation, and related it to her hope it would gain love from her mother.  It did not.  These stories of godding (acts of arrogance to others) seem endless.

A perfect, holy, loving and attentive God gives us our children, our lives, our freedoms, our privileges related to the gifts of others in our lives.  At the very least we will not deny the beauty of the truth that we will not do to others anything we would not want done to us.  It is a biblical insight that leads to decency and order, making room for everyone in a context of freedom and acceptance – responsibility.  The principle is not only to be offered as a characteristic of freedom, in that I am free to believe in the freedom for all because I believe in freedom for myself.  It is orderly, clear, possible, and expected as part of the human psyche and fair thinking.  It is also to be defended.  The alternative is unacceptable for the future.

Christians would find no benefit in forcing others to be Christian.  Benefit is in the persuasion of the faithful, by the Holy Spirit and Scripture, to eternal freedom.  Scripture acknowledges various levels of freedom as it emerges in the context of nations.  The Apostle states that he was born free.  In context, he was talking to a man who had purchased Roman citizenship.  We look upon the Roman period as a period when people were conquered and forced to follow Roman rule.  If a Roman, one was thought to be free because the person could appeal to Rome for justice – which the Apostle did, even while he was a prisoner.  The best the world had to offer at the time was Roman freedom, even when Rome (City) was exclusive to itself.  Scripture is concerned with freedom that comes, not from a national identity, but deliverance from the orientation and inclination to sin.  Sin can prevent us from becoming free citizens of God’s kingdom.