There is a celebrated statement by Jesus on freedom in John 8:32-36. It’s about truth making free and real freedom being found in Christ. Given the history of the nation, one does wonder at the response by the Jewish audience who said that they were Abraham’s seed and were never in bondage to anyone! Since the time of the Babylonian exile they had been a vassal state to succeeding world powers. Jesus makes it plain He was speaking about freedom from sin, not national freedom. Paul (Rom.6:16) gives the true assessment of this aspect of life when he says that no one is really free. We are dependent creatures and only have two options in this regard – we are either slaves to sin or slaves to righteousness.
One can be free (from sin) in slavery (national), but one would prefer to be free, both spiritually and nationally (cf. 1 Cor. 7:21). Sadly, we are losing our national freedoms. In fact, it is the whole West that is in trouble. From whence did the West get its start to give us our political freedom? A number of things were involved, not the least being the rise of science (freely attested to have been fathered by God-fearing researchers), and the influence of the Bible in the formation of our laws. In the perspective of some, God is the great Spoiler of freedom, but they do not realize that the laws of God are for our good always (Deut.10:13) and that they are slaves to sin. Often, it is in the pursuit of freedom that we lose it, and we embody the line in an old Janis Joplin song, Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.
God told Israel not to do what seemed right in their own eyes (Num. 15:38ff; Deut. 12:8) for man is not equipped to know the path he should go (Prov. 14:12; Jer. 10:23). He told them that freedom (prosperity and national security) was to be found in Him (Deut. 28:1ff; 15ff cf. 30:15,16), and this was to a land-locked nation surrounded by seven often-hostile nations. Sadly today we trust in our island position and the good old U.S.A., and many see God’s prescription for freedom to be the very antithesis of personal and national policy.
Freedom is not lost overnight (there are some exceptions; the fabled thousand year Reich lasted about twelve years). Wander through the graveyard of nations which is world history and you notice that deaths came by gradual demise. Nations struggle to come to fruition, have their glory days in the sun, become decadent, are weighed in the balance and found wanting, and go to the grave. I saw a T-shirt recently that carried the slogan Freedom is not free (it was an army promotion). I thought “How true”. Loss of freedom is inter-generational as God visits the iniquity of the one generation upon the children to the third and fourth generation. (This is not the false doctrine of inherited sin (Ezek. 18:20) but the legacy that one generation leaves to the next)
When I was an infant my life was protected in the womb. In the mad mad chase for personal freedom for one generation it takes away that freedom from the next. If I was in the womb now, my life has no protection from the State. My mother has the right to kill me, and if the procedure fails and I am born alive, I still have no protection but I am left to die!
In taking away from God the right to give and take life we are now beginning an attack on the other vulnerable end of the spectrum of life – the aged. In the name of “the good death” we are turning doctors into murderers and rather than the stewardship of life being the norm for an approach to life, utilitarian considerations are being promoted. I’ve often wondered why capital punishment by lethal injection is considered by many to be “cruel and unusual punishment” but is a “good death” for the aged. One doesn’t have to be an Einstein genius to see how pressure will be applied for people to “get out of the road” and take the option of death. And it won’t be only the aged, but also younger people with disabilities etc.
When I was a boy I didn’t know anyone who was divorced. God hates divorce (Mal.2:14). In granting the freedom to enter into a marriage relationship and then cast them off at will has a devastating effect on the next generation. We have had easy divorce for enough time now to see the results of such. Numerous studies have been done and what they reveal are things like the following: The emotional cost is traumatic: a research study by the University of Virginia determined that 12 months after they were divorced, 73% of women and 60% of men felt their divorce was a mistake. Dr. Lee Salk said “The trauma of divorce is second only to death”. The social cost is significant. A sense of restlessness, isolation, and loneliness often sets in after a divorce as many feel cut off from former friends, and ,often, even from relatives. Former acquaintances may grow cool. The cost to children is sobering. A 10 year study of the children of divorce by psychologist Judith Wallerstein concluded; “Divorce can traumatize young children to the point where they enter adulthood adulthood as emotional hostages to past events, psychologically incapable of leading happy lives”. Another study of some 18,000 school children (Time magazine) showed that children from homes broken by divorce have “much more” difficulty at school than children from homes not touched by divorce. According to a Newsweek cover story, “the comforting old saw that children are flexible enough to cope and bounce back from divorce” is contrary to the evidence. Then of course there is the spiritual cost as couples find themselves living contrary to Jesus’ teaching (Matt.19:1ff).
The freedom to practice sexual perversion plays out in the next generation. Children are adopted into same-sex families and can be taunted at school by children from the God-ordained arrangement (because they are children and are not responsible enough to realize the situation). So to protect them we make laws to enforce the acceptance of such perversions. We remove the freedom to believe what God has spoken. For the first half of my life homosexuality was not only a sin against man and God, but a criminal offence. Now it is lauded! How far we have fallen and how quickly!
We reap what we sow. Many of us can remember when as children there was only one “rule” – Be home by dark. We roamed the neighbourhood on foot or pushbikes and our parents had no issues with that. Today, with “stranger danger” we are afflicted with the traffic jams at “drop-off” and “pick-up” times because it is not considered safe for children to walk or ride to school. And many of them are overweight and unhealthy because they don’t have the exercise of going to and coming from school.
Francis Canavan, in his book; Pins in the Liberal Balloon, wrote We did away with state churches in this country so that all Protestants could feel at home in it. We de-Protestantized the country so that Catholics, too, could feel at home in it. We have de-Christianized the country to make Jews feel welcome, then de-religionized it so that atheists and agnostics may feel equally welcome. Now, we are demoralizing the country so that deviants from accepted moral norms will not feel excluded. The lowest common denominator, we have discovered, is like the horizon, always approached but never reached. This was written from an American perspective, but the parallels with our culture are so evident.
We are now at the point where I feel essentially disfranchised, there being no party that is willing to stand for freedom to practice righteousness: and it feels like a different country from the one I grew up in. Christian couples run into roadblocks when attempting to adopt children. Christians are forbidden to help those who want to move from a homosexual lifestyle to heterosexuality (but there is no such prohibition if one wants to move from a heterosexual lifestyle to a homosexual one). Many years ago Wycliffe said “This is the cause of all our problems; our not knowing the scriptures”. How true that is now when Biblical illiteracy is leading us down the road to slavery – slavery to sin, and ultimately, slavery to another civilization.