Most people understand that freedom is coupled with responsibility. My generation, the generation of the 60’s, sought to uncouple that knowledge of the obvious via the musings of people like Paul Nietzsche. Many of my parents generation mostly played around the edges of his disdain of traditional morality, religion, truth and the promotion of the ideal of self-overcoming. Many of them, however, rejected the basic premise that God was dead by continuing to raise us in the attendance of a local church where a Pastor would articulate Biblical truths and the congregation would participate in communal singing of hymns of praise and worship. In their generation another philosopher would emerge to tell the world that existence precedes essence. This philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre stated the following: ”we define our own identity through radical freedom and conscious choices”. Both philosophical thinkers addressed existential nihilism, the lack of inherent meaning in what they believed was a godless universe.

The freedom that was experienced by Americans up till that time was understood differently than many people today seem to understand it. Many people of my generation and my parents generation began to embrace without question Nietzsche and Sartre’s conclusions. Popular musicians such as the Beatles broadcast that message to the masses (Imagine by John Lennon). Some rejected the outright insanity of the message and attempted to live with traditional Christian beliefs, Yet many others sowed to the wind by abandoning any semblance of sexual morality or the sanctity and health of their bodies as a direct result of adopting these philosophies that attempted to dismember God from our human existence. Both Nietzsche and Sarte’s observations and conclusions have been exposed for the implicit premises of their beliefs by numerous authors since then (see just a few articles referenced below in reagrds to this statement). Yet many people embrace it still since it effectively uncouples their conscience from their actions. But God is not mocked, and His nature is such that the creation that he called good, humanity, should not continue in this deception without a reckoning.

What I have learned through my life is that freedom, the kind that actually aids one to see the nature of Truth and understand how to live in the meaning of freedom is more difficult than living in a false reality. Conversations with those who cannot define and accept the innate differences that exist between a male and a female have helped me understand how words can create deceit that are potentially eternally lethal to the one who accepts this transformation without consideration of its ramifications. In the same manner, various biblically unsupported Christian beliefs that have resulted from private interpretations of Scripture embraced and promoted by people with “itching ears to hear what they want to believe versus what is actually true” has an identical result.

Our nations founders have been known to articulate a definition of freedom that was prevalent for much of the Christian (church) age: the freedom to do what is right and good, the ability to seek after, understand and live by the conditions of Truth. I can vaguely remember this principle that was articulated in the public schools in my early elementary school years in Pennsylvania. That teaching in the Chicago suburban schools of my junior and high school years was completely purged. Instead, freedom was a word that was rarely spoken or even defined by those with authority to teach. Instead, my generation redefined it as the license to do whatever feelings and thoughts dictate – exploring the world through senses and forming beliefs from those experiences – parroting Sartre’s conclusions verbatim.

I hope and pray that God would have mercy on our nation for its tragic suppression of the wonder and blessing of freedom – the ability to do what is right and true that is supported by governing authorities. If we do not corporately understand that this is the legitimate role of government, tyranny is lurking around the corner as it has manifested in many nations around the world. Why would God allow pain and suffering of this magnitude as history details? Perhaps it is because some cannot be un-blinded from the deceit they have willingly embraced until they are reaping the ideas that they embrace and sow into their lives and the lives of others. It is true that people with an understanding of the nature of God’s holiness, justice and mercy can live in any environment, knowing that eternity is the ultimate reality that has been prepared for those who accept and embrace the freedom that comes from forgiveness of their sin.

I’m thankful that I live in a nation that is celebrating its 250th anniversary, especially this nation that was formed with this understanding: “...that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” May we continue to experience that freedom and pass on the sanctity, significance and beauty of that word to the next generation of Americans and the nations of this world.

References

https://bigthink.com/articles/the-sartre-fallacy-or-being-irrational-about-reason/

https://st.network/analysis/top/friedrich-nietzsche-christianity-and-jesus-of-nazareth.html

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/schaeffers-how-should-we-now-then-live-40-years-later/

https://nccs.net/blogs/articles/principles-of-liberty-in-our-founding-documents