Ah, yes. That glorious holiday where everyone gets to grill out, hop in the pool, and make small explosions in the sky. Those are fun times.
If you haven't checked your calendar lately, tomorrow is July 4th, better known in these former colonies as Independence Day.
I'm not going to pretend that the United States is a perfect nation, nor am I going to try and excuse all of our faults for a notion of American exceptionalism, but I don't doubt that we are blessed to live here.
Sure, democracy and freedom are much more the norm across the world now than they ever have been before, but we still experience a greater degree of freedom here than most nations.
Consider the United Kingdom where it seems like day after day you're hearing more restrictions come down as the security state expands. Civilized nations like Russia and China keep a close eye on what their people can and can't do. Smaller countries with more limited government may be similar to the US as far as individual freedoms go, I don't really have any extensive research on that topic, but I do believe that we have the most individual liberties of a nation our size.
The cynics among us, though, would love to tell you that any restriction on liberty is the equivalent to living in a police state. That if we are unable to do whatever we want whenever we want it, then we are never truly free.
I disagree. Vehemently.
The overarching principle of American freedom has always been the guarantee of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." What that means is that you can aspire to these three ideals, but not without impunity.
See, if your pursuit of happiness impedes someone else's, then there's a dispute that must be litigated. If your liberty impedes someone else's, then we have to draw a line and figure out whose liberty takes precedence. If your life comes at the expense of someone else's, that's usually a capital offense.
So long as your chase of those three ideals in no way restricts someone else's chase of those three ideals, then you can probably do it.
I'm obviously painting with a broad brush here, I'm sure there are individual examples where I would be proven wrong, but the general idea is valid.
Pure freedom is anything but. With pure freedom, only the strongest and the most powerful have freedom. With pure freedom, better known as anarchy, there are generally precious few opportunities to pursue happiness.
I remember reading two books in my scholastic career that dealt with a non-anarchistic version of pure freedom, The Education of Little Tree and The Light in the Forest. Both deal with young boys and their exposure to native American traditions.
In The Education of Little Tree, the boy is being adopted by his grandfather who is half-blooded Cherokee and who is still steeped in those traditions. So the boy goes from living in society to living in the ideal, isolated life in the mountains with his grandparents.
In The Light in the Forest, you have the opposite tale. A boy who was stolen from a family of white settlers as a baby by natives is returned to a society he knows nothing about. He has experienced freedom in the purest sense, living off the land and enjoying the peace of native life, but now he has to live by society's rules.
In both cases, we are presented with this idea that society is restrictive and demanding while the freedom of nature is preferred.
Honestly, if someone wants to move off the grid and live in nature and experience freedom that way, I'm all for it. If that is your idea of pursuing happiness, go for it. You can do that.
However, I would argue that if you're partaking of nature simply to escape society and not because you genuinely love nature, then you are abandoning the opportunities for happiness that our society can afford.
When you try to instill pure freedom in the heart of society, though, you get an even worse picture. Think about the world around you if people could do whatever they wanted with impunity. You would see greed and violence take over in a matter of days.
After all, we already have crimes like embezzlement and fraud and murder and rape, and that's with the laws we have on the books.
It sounds like a paradise, doesn't it, to just let people do whatever they want, but the reality would likely look very different. We already have a world where corporations and powerful individuals can game the system for their benefits, but we also have a system where those people often have to pay for their crimes down the road.
If there were no fear of a legal system, no restriction on the greed of the wealthy and powerful, then how much worse would it be?
Restricted freedom, to a small degree, is preferred to total freedom.
Of course there are laws that are unnecessary. Of course there are laws we could do without. That's why we should always reevaluate our soul as a nation every so often and see what needs to be changed.
And I know most of you are probably sitting there saying, "Well is Congress ever going to get anything done?" Maybe not. And I'm okay with that.
A government that is slow to enact laws is a government that is slow to take away freedom. If it were super-simple for the government to pass whatever laws they wanted, I don't know if we would have even the freedoms we do have. The obstructive system of checks and balances, when it works, is completely beneficial to the American people, even with the negative consequences of not getting laws made that we need.
But that's not really the restrictive freedom I want to focus on. I know, I'm several hundred words into this post right now and I'm changing things up on you. But you should really know how that's my style by now.
See, one of the things I love about the American government and the ideal of American restrictive freedom is how it serves as a great metaphor for our freedom in Jesus Christ.
Let me be perfectly clear. What I don't want you to hear me saying is that the American government is the embodiment of Jesus Christ, nor that it serves the function of Jesus Christ. I am simply using our governmental structure as a metaphor. Nothing more.
See, when we are in Christ, we are free. Are we free to do whatever? Are we free to just live life however we see fit?
No.
You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you. And even though “I am allowed to do anything,” I must not become a slave to anything. - 1 Corinthians 6:12 (NLT)
Paul is directly talking about sexual immorality here, but this same attitude can apply to any and all sins. And what is sin besides us doing what we want no matter the consequences?
We are drawn to sin. We are drawn to seeking out pleasure and what we think of as the easy path to life.
Here's the funny thing about the law. When the Ten Commandments were given to us (Israel, but who's counting?), it was to point out our sin. It was to show us that we could not be perfect. It was like holding up a mirror to someone with a huge pimple on their face and saying, "Hey! You can't go to the dance! You've got a massive pimple on your face."
But what Jesus did when He died on the cross was even better. He replaced the law as our mirror and said, "If you believe in me, I'll be your image to the Father. He won't see your face, but He will see my body."
Because of what Jesus did, we don't have to live under the old law anymore. Those restrictions are, technically, no longer applying to us. Now we have just one law: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.
But part of that law is to obey the Lord. If we love the Lord, we should follow and obey.
I think the biggest thing that happens when we follow Christ is that our attitude about the law changes. No longer are we looking at the law as these restrictions put on us to prevent us from following our own desires. Now we see the law as something that a loving Father has given us to protect us from our own foolishness.
Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave of sin. A slave is not a permanent member of the family, but a son is part of the family forever. So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free. - John 8:34-36 (NLT)
See, the law serves a purpose. It shows us how we can follow the Lord and save ourselves from a lot of trouble. If we make obeying God's law a priority, then we are honoring God and obeying Him.
If we keep sinning, we are slaves to sin. If we seek the Lord, we have freedom in Him.
Like I said, I want to use our legal system as a metaphor here. If you follow the law cynically, you would look at things like speed limits and basic municipal codes as hindrances. "Those darn cops telling me how fast I can drive. And what's with these confounded speed bumps?"
But imagine a world where you had no posted speed limits and the cops just pulled you over when you were driving too fast. Imagine having to guess and hope you had the right speed. Is that really better?
And with the way people drive as it is, do you really want to live in a world where any speed is okay? Do you want to live in a world where you can use your car to nudge someone else out of the way on the highway with impunity?
Again, I know our laws aren't perfect. They were written by imperfect people and an imperfect system, but I think you see my point. A world without law would be madness. When we know the way to avoid punishment, when we know the way to freedom, we are living in a much more free world because we know what rules to follow. (Within reason, of course, but I hope you have already understood me saying this all along)
Are you familiar with the concept of a sovereign citizen? These are people who believe that they can live in our cities and use our streets and reap the benefits of everyone else's taxes without paying taxes or following the laws or doing anything like that. They think that because they've declared themselves free of the law, they don't have to follow the law they were born under.
That's pretty silly. If we were talking about unjust laws where the government wanted to detain you for whatever whim that came to mind, or if they wanted to fine you just to take your money, then I'd be in agreement that these laws should be nullified and disobeyed.
However, sovereign citizens will treat any law, no matter how mundane, as an affront to their humanity.
The truth is that if you live in this country, you are under the laws of this country.
Similarly, if you are a human being living in this universe, you are under the law of God. You are guilty of sin whether you want to be or not. If you want to look at the Bible and the Ten Commandments as fun suggestions that you don't have to follow, then you've got the wrong idea.
If you think of yourself as a "sovereign citizen" who can circumvent the will and the rule of God, then you're deluding yourself. It is the pinnacle of human arrogance to say that our opinion of God changes the reality of God.
So rather than condemn yourself under the law, embrace the freedom that comes with it. The law of Jesus Christ is beautiful and simple: Follow Him. That is the law that you want to burden yourself with because, as Jesus said, his burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30).
We cannot find salvation by being good enough under any law: Moses' law or the American law. But you can find salvation and freedom in Jesus Christ. This year, let me encourage you to celebrate true freedom. Let me encourage you to celebrate the freedom that only comes from Jesus Christ.