July 4th

I hope you are raising your flags and donning stars and stripes this weekend. I hope you are remembering the price paid for you, that you might be able to mark a holiday rooted in freedom. There have been generations of great men and women who thought of you, their own future generations to come. Many were they who sacrificed their lives that you might have the privilege of choosing what is best along the lines of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In the baby stage of our country there must have been several sanguine folk who knew the story of a Life laid down for another. I don’t believe their courage was of the diesel truck, guns n’ guts variety. Nor did they stand, bawdy and proud on the cusp of a sexual revolution.
What they valued and held dear were their families, food in their bellies, and the right to defend their lives. In this spirit, they gritted their teeth and sent their beloved sons off to war.

I’ve seldom heard a veteran tell stories without tears staining his cheeks. A dear friend of ours, a WW2 bomber pilot, never spoke of his service. It was too costly to mention.

I am wondering at the cycle of history and how quickly we are abandoning our reverence for freedom. Perhaps this shows how indifferent we have become. Maybe we’ve so acclimated to our rights that we are flabby in our convictions. It seems our culture is too thinned-skinned and tolerant to even be bold enough to step out as free-thinking individuals–what used to be the cornerstone of our democracy. If your right to think and act freely is limited by my idea of what I understand to be acceptable–well, then, that is hardly freedom. We are only tossing lassoes around each other’s necks, hoping to throttle one another. If we keep running in circles around gun control, abortion, immigration–well then, I think we are missing the root of the issue. I wonder: what will become of America?

There are two things to consider, and they are these:

The first: We are all living in an infinite space that we feebly approach as finite. Whether you believe in a God or not, the cosmos are immeasurable and expansive. Numbers continue to count up to infinity. We are only humans with a bit of reasoning humming in our heads. The rules we have determined to make a government have evolved from intuition fed by experience. Observing the if-thens, causes-and-effects–these are our best, most humane (as we understand them) tools to govern men. For example, if a proven murderer isn’t justly punished, he may go on killing people. Therefore, we lock him up to prevent him from doing so.

The second thing to consider is–there are some things we cannot control–things that are out of our power to reason. How can hate and bitterness grow so prolific in our hearts? How could a person come to the point of murdering? Yet each of us is fully capable of the very act! It is a scary, overwhelming thought, to face the depth of depravity inside our own souls. It has been clawing instinctually in our bones since the dawn of time. We dare God himself, hate burning in our eyes: What if I did whatever I want?

And so these two things–our feeble, limited understanding of controlling what we think is right and good and our inner, out of control me-me-me! monster, fight constantly. It is manifested in every institution: family, work, school, government. Every hot topic is in a tug of war between perceived control and selfishness, both of which quickly run amok, because we cannot rightly source the why behind our motives. When our feathers are ruffled or expectations are not met, we stiffen and throw a tantrum. 

Perhaps we have reached the pinnacle of freedom apart from God, and this is why we must begin chaining up those who disagree with us. It is an ugly cycle, the push-pull of souls who are inwardly divided.

Our capacity to rage self-righteously and our out-of-control urge to get what we want–as well as the desire to watch others scratch each other’s eyeballs out over the matters of the day–is ultimately ruining us. Plain and simple, we are sinners.

Sin? Who even talks about sin anymore? Not just the dirty, fleshy kind, but the self-righteous, fake kind? We sprinkle these pesky attitudes with soft admonitions–Talk kindly to yourself! Be open-minded! But only with an undercurrent philosophy of do what makes you happy. We sabotage our own best intentions simply by being under the influence of the world. We will not make peace unless someone bends a knee, till a major sacrifice is made.
George Washington said,

The Nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

This is a curious thing to say in 2019. That a nation might be founded on Christian principles and held up by duty…or carried off by hate or pleasure–look around! It is not impossible! In fact, we are staring this disaster in the face. We have taken a holy God out of the picture–replaced him with our own cockroach-level ideas of freedom.
But Jesus still offers peace–marked by the blood He once shed on a cross. His life for yours.
You might lay down your life and find He hands you a new one, a better one. This is the way to freedom. This marks the path of liberty, where even a whole nation can be healed.

America is fascinating. She has birthed her own breed of beautiful misfits and adopted many more. She has welcomed the “tired, the poor, the huddling masses yearning to be free” (Emma Lazarus). This has not been without a price, and I am thankful that people who have never known me have paid it.

In G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, he makes a study of order and grace. It makes me think of the opportunities we still have in our country as Americans:

We must be much more angry with theft than before, and yet much kinder to thieves than before. There was room for wrath and love to run wild. And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.
(Chesterton, Orthodoxy)

God bless America, the land of the free, the land of heroes. May we turn back to Jesus so we might find peace among men. May we make room for good things to run wild.