Returning to Biblical Liberty

The word liberty, a forgotten concept, is making a comeback these days. As we experience the ever tightening jaws of the ‘nanny’ state who consumes her children even as they are suckled, the questions are forced to the forefront of our minds. We want freedom so bad – we can hardly breath. And yet, we love the state so. We love the milk of her unending benefits. Unemployment runs for two years now, college grants keep us fed with educational nourishment, the army straightens out the wider world, and countless government warnings protect us from our own stupidity. We love the stuff but we hate the maw that swallows us and our freedom. We feel ourselves being gulped whole, the hot breath and the downward yanking toward the end of all freedom terrifies us.

Those battles raging in foreign lands, Libya, Egypt, they inspire us. They inspire the news talkers, to verbally gladhand about freedom from tyrants and about ‘democracy’ as they so often discuss. American states are increasingly legislating for their increased liberty against the legal over-shadowing of the federal juggernaut. Everything is starting to be tossed on the table. States are fighting for a return of their rights to control firearms, health care, immigration, abortion, legal money, and drugs. Everywhere the little people are stirring against the central government and the endless laws of the humanist’s legal machines.

In many ways, so many ways, we are a reflection of our heritage.  We are unique but not wholly so. We are the product of our culture and teaching, of the generation who went before, and of their parents as well. And, in so much as we have absorbed the unbiblical aspects of those influences we are become fallen, retrograde, washing away in the swirling philosophies of those people and institutions that washed us to these shores.

We are children of the Enlightenment. We demand freedom but cannot define it in any meaningful way. Is it release from heavy taxes? but we so enjoy the benefits those taxes supply. Is it guaranteed housing, food, and medical care? but we detest the restrictions and all the parameters that are forced along with those guarantees. We think we are voting for freedom even as we rivet our own chains tighter. We are hopeless people.

It is for these causes we must return to Biblical definitions for liberty if we are to rediscover hope. Within Christian civilization the idea of liberty never was just a list of cherished activities not to be regulated. It was not a table of ten Amendments designed to secure the rights of the people. Rather, Christian liberty was always defined in response to and obedience to God’s law – not man’s law. God’s law established the parameters in which man should live. It showed us what is justice, what is morally righteous, and how those precepts were to be initiated into the civil behavior in society. Liberty was not an undefined dreaming for freedom. It was instead the foundation of righteousness anchored to eternal principle in God’s word.

The Biblical definition for liberty is, ‘The right to obey God’s law without restriction and to receive all benefits His law allows’. As a practical matter this means we cannot be forced to do anything immoral with our bodies, our money, our children, or anything that God has given into our care. It also means we have the protection from civil government defending us from those who would keep us from our service or duties God has commanded. The ability of the family to provide for its own cannot be infringed by unlawful (against God’s law) statutes that rob the family of money or other resources needed to perform those duties. The state cannot rightfully restrict or redirect criminal punishments in violation of Biblical principle. All activities God has left unregulated must be unregulated by the state. These are the types of things Christians must be seeking if we are to have any return to liberty in this land. Pressing for freedom along any other lines can lead only to further injustice and misery of the people. May we be voices for true freedom in these days of confusion.

For Christian Civilization,

Don Schanzenbach