Freedom: Let it Ring!

It's America's birthday and I've been thinking about freedom. In my book, The Blossoming of the Soul, when I listed my devotional titles alphabetically, I discovered that I had written two devotionals entitled “Freedom”. I guess I think about freedom a lot. Recently I've been thinking about freedom as freedom from attachments and needs. Unforgiveness is a form of enslavement because it is an attachment to the unforgiven person. The person may live in another country, but you are attached to him if you can't forgive him. Hatred is an attachment. You are enslaved to anyone you hate or have chronic anger toward. If you need to see someone hurt, perhaps the way you have been hurt by them, you are not free; you are attached to that need. And it will drag you down and darken your life. Whatever you need from another person is an attachment that diminishes freedom. You are attached to what you need from that person. It could be for them to love you better. I see many people in my counseling practice who are trying to get someone to love them better. I have never seen this to be a happy process. There is a verse in the Bible that says “God will supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” [Phil 4:19]. I have discovered that if I take this verse seriously, and stop trying to get people to meet my needs, I feel much freer. The need for more money is an attachment that diminishes freedom. Of course, any addiction is a form of enslavement. Fear prevents one from feeling free. Communion with God [prayer], love and gratitude, according to the Bible, are the antidotes to fear. And we can always pray, love and be thankful if we are mindful.

In our beloved nation we have experienced unprecedented political freedom. But we see that political freedom does not guarantee soul freedom—the inner felt experience of freedom. Only spiritual maturity—growing in Christ—can supply that inner felt experience. Only Jesus can deliver us from the oppressive forces of this world. Until we allow Him to do so, we will never feel free; and we will likely blame someone for it; or we will be trying to get someone or something to be different so that we can feel free.

God wants His people free. And that means that they should FEEL free—not just know that they are.

Look deeply into whatever oppresses you. Whatever it is, Christ has delivered you from it, destroyed it, or overcome it. And you are “In Him”.

God please bless America; and let freedom ring! The freedom of Christ our Lord Who came to “set at liberty those who are oppressed.” [Lk4:18]

Isaiah 58:6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?”

Break every yoke!!

C.S, Lewis' statements about Jesus

C.S. LEWIS’ GREAT WORDS ABOUT JESUS IN MERE CHRISTIANITY*

After articulately describing Satan’s rebellious bid to become a god to himself, leading the first humans into the Fall, Lewis describes how God begins His redemptive work by selecting a particular people [the Jews] and spending several centuries “hammering into their heads the sort of God He was—that there was only one of Him and that He cared about right conduct.”

Continuing to quote Lewis:

Then comes the real shock. Among those Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world Who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.

One part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to. I mean the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic….What should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men’s toes and stealing other men’s money? Asinine futility is the kindest description we should give of this conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offenses. This makes sense only if He was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history.

Yet [and this is the strange, significant thing] even His enemies, when they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness or conceit. Still less do unprejudiced readers. Christ says that He is “humble and meek” and we believe Him; not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristic we would attribute to some of His sayings.

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said, would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg—or else He would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

*Macmillan Paperback Ed., 1960, pp54-56

Secular Religion

Below is a quote, the conclusion, of an article by Katy Butler entitled “Living On Purpose”.  In it which she chronicles certain aspects of the lives of two men, Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr, [co-authors of The Power of Full Engagement] who were seeking perfection; one in coaching, the other in his own life. Her conclusion represents as close a description, from the secular standpoint, of the Christian worldview as I have seen. She implies that there are forces [Psychological? Social? Spiritual?] that we do not control, and that shape us. We can cooperate with these forces [and by implication resist some of them], but we must also practice “self-acceptance”, “persistence”, and “forgiveness”. The article also briefly chronicles the secularization of culture and the helpful religious rituals that were left behind, and the deleterious effects of their loss.

This may be the greatest paradox of the expanded definition of the unconscious. The more we know about factors outside our conscious control, the greater the chance we have to influence and channel them. At the same time, the more the Renaissance vision of the perfectability of man recedes into the distance, the more our genuine ability to shape our lives grows, and the more our grandiose sense of complete control wanes. So does Freud’s magisterial conception of an Ego that would, after indefinite years of psychoanalysis, supplant the writhing Id.

This paradox invites us to look over our lives, take a deep breath, and hold the reins with a looser hand. We can’t control ourselves. We can’t even control the factors that control us. We can simply help shape what helps shape us. We influence our lives, but we don’t control them. If we want to be effective and happy, we need to include on our lists of values not only “excellence,” “effort,” and “integrity,” but “self-acceptance,” “persistence,” and “forgiveness.” This may be the deeper meaning of the notion of “practice” that the seeker and the tennis coach have stumbled on, and a way to approach the vast unconscious with a deeper emotional wisdom.


“Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious.”
– Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

Darwin the Creationist

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Charles R. Darwin, Origin of Species, 2^nd Ed., 1860 p. 491 [Conclusion]

[bold print added]

Memorial Day Thoughts

For, brothers and sisters, you have been called and delivered into liberty; only do not use liberty to selfishly gratify the flesh, but by love serve one another. Galations 5:13


The movie "Saving Private Ryan" brought some of the horrific realities of warfare into focus. War historian Steven Ambrose said that the only thing missing from the movie was the smell of blood and graphite. I think the numbing, sickening fear of warfare--men going for days with feces and urine in their pants because they can't take time to clean themselves--also  cannot be cinematically depicted in its full horror. But we should try to grasp it because we have so much of what we have because our ancestors and friends were and are willing to enter into it. My Uncle Dwight walked ashore on Omaha beach on D-Day. I asked him what he saw. "A lot of dead soldiers" he replied somberly. He almost drowned because the Higgins Boat captains were so anxious to pull away from the German gun fire coming from the cliffs that they barely got the men close enough to shore. He also said he saw a church burning on the hill. How metaphoric!
My son entered the military [Army] more than twenty years ago and is still in the service. When he entered, knowing the instability of world affairs, we both had to face the possibility of him being in a combat zone. A question I had to ask myself is "Is this nation worth the life of my son?" I think every parent sending a son or daughter into combat asks that question. I struggled with it. I love America--what she has been, her founding principles, government for and by the people, freedom endowed by our Creator, built-in system of checks and balances to prevent corruptive power, freedom of religion, press, bearing of arms, peaceful assembly, etc. I believe, along with the Founding Fathers that this form of government was divinely inspired through the Christian faith.
But I have seen a drift away from the Christian Faith in my sixty-six years on this earth. And I have seen this nation evolve [or devolve] from [for example] the moral sensitivity that would preclude showing Elvis Presley from the waste down when he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show [I saw it], to the likes of Victoria Secret commercials and flaunting sexuality to the fullest extent possible. I have seen and continue to see rampant violence and entitlement to rights to have sex "any way I want it", and you'd better approve of it! I've seen partying taken to the level of the absurd. I've seen "ridiculousness" celebrated, I've seen people go to astounding lengths of absurdity simply to gain attention and notoriety, I've seen entertainment refined to the point that you can be entertained twenty-four seven; and I've seen children idolizing those who entertain, even if they provide no other service to humanity than to occupy the brains of millions of people for no other gain than to be entertained. And I've seen us trying to export this tripe to other nations, some of whom are balking and putting on the brakes of that importation--and I can see why!
Here's the upshot: I wonder how long we will maintain a volunteer army of good men and women who are saying "I'll die for this nation" when they and their parents and spouses are surveying the horizon of what they say they will die for. "I'll die so you can have more and better sex. I'll die so you can demand better service at your restaurants. I'll die so you can figure out ways to make more money in the stock market. I'll die so you can complain about how miserable this nation is. I'll die so you can support politicians who will vote in ways that benefit you but not the common man. I'll die so you can march in the streets preaching hatred, stirring up strife, burning and looting. I'll die so you can get fat on fast food and lay around in your parents' home making excuses for not being able to work. I'll die so you can have sex with girls who don't have a clue what love is, get them pregnant then move on to the next girlfriend when they get a little moody or when you have to get up in the night to change a diaper. I'll die so you can ignore every noble effort to do some good in the world while you focus exclusively on your entertainment, vacations and retirement. I'll die so you can continue your meaningless, selfish, depressed existence.
Or maybe....maybe....I won't. Maybe I'll let those dark forces that always lurk at the fringes of freedom come in like a beast and wreak some havoc in your entitled, stingy little world. Maybe that will wake you up.
Then I realized, that's not a son or daughter contemplating military service speaking; that's the God of creation; the God of Jesus Christ; the One Who's voice has faded into the noise and chaos of our prosperity.
Oh Lord, please speak louder! Some of us are still listening.

Public Education and the Bible

Benjamin Rush

SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE; SURGEON GENERAL OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY; RATIFIER OF THE U. S. CONSTITUTION; “FATHER OF AMERICAN MEDICINE”; TREASURER OF THE U. S. MINT; “FATHER OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS UNDER THE CONSTITUTION”
The Gospel of Jesus Christ prescribes the wisest rules for just conduct in every situation of life. Happy they who are enabled to obey them in all situations! . . . My only hope of salvation is in the infinite tran¬scendent love of God manifested to the world by the death of His Son upon the Cross. Noth¬ing but His blood will wash away my sins [Acts 22:16]. I rely exclusively upon it. Come, Lord Jesus! Come quickly! [Revelation 22:20]⁹⁷
I do not believe that the Constitution was the offspring of inspiration, but I am as satisfied that it is as much the work of a Divine Providence as any of the miracles recorded in the Old and New Testament.⁹⁸
By renouncing the Bible, philosophers swing from their moorings upon all moral subjects… It is the only correct map of the human heart that ever has been published.⁹⁹
[T]he greatest discoveries in science have been made by Christian philosophers and . . . there is the most knowledge in those countries where there is the most Christianity.¹⁰⁰
[T]he only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government is the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible.¹⁰¹
The great enemy of the salvation of man, in my opinion, never invented a more effective means of limiting Christianity from the world than by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible at schools.¹⁰²
[C]hristianity is the only true and perfect religion; and… in proportion as mankind adopt its principles and obey its precepts, they will be wise and happy.¹⁰³
The Bible contains more knowledge necessary to man in his present state than any other book in the world.¹⁰⁴
The Bible, when not read in schools, is seldom read in any subsequent period of life… [T]he Bible… should be read in our schools in preference to all other books because it contains the greatest portion of that kind of knowledge which is calculated to produce private and public happiness.¹⁰⁵

America and Christianity

http://www.youtube.com/embed/YjntXYDPw44

https://wallbuilders.com/founding-fathers-jesus-christianity-bible/

John Adams

SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE; JUDGE; DIPLOMAT; ONE OF TWO SIGNERS OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS; SECOND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.¹

Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company: I mean hell.²

The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity.³

Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited. . . . What a Eutopia – what a Paradise would this region be!⁴

I have examined all religions, and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world.⁵


Thomas Jefferson
The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.⁶³
The practice of morality being necessary for the well being of society, He [God] has taken care to impress its precepts so indelibly on our hearts that they shall not be effaced by the subtleties of our brain. We all agree in the obligation of the moral principles of Jesus and nowhere will they be found delivered in greater purity than in His discourses.⁶⁴
I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to His doctrines in preference to all others.⁶⁵
I am a real Christian – that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ.


Benjamin Rush

SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE; SURGEON GENERAL OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY; RATIFIER OF THE U. S. CONSTITUTION; “FATHER OF AMERICAN MEDICINE”; TREASURER OF THE U. S. MINT; “FATHER OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS UNDER THE CONSTITUTION”
The Gospel of Jesus Christ prescribes the wisest rules for just conduct in every situation of life. Happy they who are enabled to obey them in all situations! . . . ⁹⁷
I do not believe that the Constitution was the offspring of inspiration, but I am satisfied that it is as much the work of a Divine Providence as any of the miracles recorded in the Old and New Testament.⁹⁸