2 Corinthians 3:17 (NIV), “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
Greetings everyone, and this is a very special week for the Christian faith, it is Holy Week. It is the week that is bookended by the arrival of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into Jerusalem, Palm Sunday…and His resurrection, Easter Sunday. Now, of course, the commercial aspect of this time has changed everything into being about bunny rabbits and eggs. However, when one ponders the true meaning of this week, 2 Corinthians 3:17 affirms one single word: freedom. Jesus Christ came into this world to be the sacrificial offering for all mankind to wash away our sins and give us true freedom, spiritual in nature, and for eternity.
The fundamental basis of the Christian faith is the four Rs: Redemption, Reconciliation, Restoration, and Resurrection. Jesus Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection represent the ultimate sacrifice and the perennial triumph of spiritual liberty and freedom. That is what this Holy Week is all about. A reflection of just how much God loved us, His sinful creation, that He would seek to redeem us, reconcile us to Him, restore the relationship with Him, and enable us to be resurrected with Him.
But, amazingly enough, this weekend is more than just Easter weekend. It is a weekend when another aspect of freedom began. This Saturday is the 250th anniversary of the start of the American Revolution. On April 19, 1775, some 77 ordinary men took the field in Lexington, Massachusetts, against the greatest military power the world knew at that time, Great Britain. They were not professional soldiers. Matter of fact, there was not an America, an Army, a Navy, or a Marine Corps on that day. What did exist was a desire to be free and released from the yoke of tyranny. And it took a level of spiritual faith to take that field and make that stand.
This Saturday, I will be there in Lexington, Massachusetts. Yeah, a kid born in a segregated hospital in 1961 will stand on hallowed ground where the fight for my Country began. And it is a fight that continues to this day. I will run in the 111th annual Lexington Patriots Five Miler to commemorate and give honor to those Men. The men who took action to give us an earthly freedom and birth to a Nation unlike any other. There is no other Nation in the world that views the individual as sovereign because their unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (property, as written by John Locke) are endowed to them by the very same Judeo-Christian God, Creator, who sent His only begotten Son for our spiritual freedom.
I do not know if these two events have ever occurred together before, but it is possibly not a coincidence that they are at this time in our history.
Christ’s sacrifice and the sacrifice of those on April 19th are the reason why we live in this incredible Republic. And just the same, we must redeem the fundamental principles and values of this Nation. We must reconcile ourselves to its promise and do so for our children and grandchildren. We must endeavor to restore this Constitutional Republic and honor its rule of law…and then we shall see a resurrection of a new and greater America.
If we fail to do so, well, Scottish political philosopher Alexander Fraser Tytler gave us a dire warning back in the 18th century, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
According to Fraser Tytler, we are 50 years past our life cycle, but notice what it is that brings a Nation out of bondage…spiritual faith.
Those who would seek to divorce America from its Judeo-Christian faith heritage are the ones who would lead us back into bondage. This weekend, I would humbly ask you to think about one simple word: Freedom. It is the seminal word that is the basis for this great Nation. However, if we forget how we began, we will be easily manipulated into understanding where we are, and totally lost and confused as to where we are heading.
Leftism, socialism, Marxism, and communism stand against spiritual faith, and therefore, it is against individual freedom. But, they fully embrace their totalitarian vision and ideology of economic enslavement and individual bondage…tyranny.
God bless America. God bless the men who took the field in Lexington 250 years ago. And Happy Resurrection Day…for your soul and your Nation.
Steadfast and Loyal.
This column was published at American Constitutional Rights Union
The views expressed in CCNS member articles are not necessarily the views or positions of the entire CCNS. They are the views of the authors, who are members of the CCNS.
