Most Americans know that freedom stands as one of our foremost national values. However, very few Americans have the slightest idea what freedom means. The most popular erroneous definition of freedom goes something like this: “Everyone can do whatever they want as long as they do not harm anyone else.” Problematically, such a definition of freedom does not work for a couple of reasons.
First, unless we have some agreed upon definitions of what constitutes harm and what constitutes help, this terminology proves meaningless. What I view as helping you, you may view as harmful. What I refrain from doing to you because I do not want to be harmful to you, may turn out to be something you would have found imminently helpful. The only way to have meaning for the words “do no harm” involves having a moral code that defines what constitutes beneficial action and what constitutes harmful action. Of course, if we have agreed upon moral codes (e.g. the Sermon on the Mount), then no one has the ability to do whatever he wants to do. Thus, either way we go, we have an impossible situation.
Second, many of the things necessary for a person to have freedom will not come about unless people have a firm moral code. In order for the poor and disadvantaged, for instance, to gain freedom, other people have to be working for justice and for poor people’s sustenance. For essential components of a person’s freedom to exist for anyone, all of us must have values like fidelity and faithfulness, altruism and charity, sacrificial love and love for our neighbor equal to our love for ourselves. In other words, freedom cannot exist without a high moral code, the sort of moral code taught by Christ.
The people who first theorized freedom (e.g., John Locke, who was read by our nation’s founders) assumed that freedom would exist within a context of Christian values. They did not want the government to impose a particular flavor of Christianity, so they theorized a separation of church and state. Nonetheless, it never crossed their minds that someone would advocate a society of free people without a Christian moral compass being common to the population.
It turns out that the results of the sort of freedom that says, “Do whatever you want,” ends up being fundamentally selfish people, unconcerned about the needs of others, and bitterly divided by their conflicting selfish personal interests. If that sounds a lot like what America is becoming, that would be because it is. We who would restore true freedom to America must witness passionately for Jesus Christ and the values of Jesus Christ. We cannot impose them on others through government fiat, but we must teach them to others through convincing argument. Only then can true freedom exist among us.
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Bob