St. Paul wrote to the Galatians: “You were called for freedom, brothers and sisters. But do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; rather, serve one another through love.”
We want to be free. Freedom is a valued word for Americans. We pride ourselves in being “The Land of the Free” and we have made great sacrifices to make it that way. Abraham Lincoln said, “He who is not concerned with freedom for others will not long enjoy it himself.”
In the everyday life of our country as well as in our own life, true freedom is freedom for doing the right thing, not freedom from doing the right thing.
What do you and I really render to God in our personal lives? If we claim to be disciples, then what does that actually mean in the way we speak and act?
I believe one of the most common mistaken ideas of freedom is that we are free when we can do as we please. This is the kind of freedom that the prodigal son craved while at his father’s house. But what happened when the father gave him this freedom? His money gone, his health gone, his reputation gone, kneeling at the trough, trying to snatch something to eat before a hog got it— what a sorry picture of freedom.
The same tragedy has come to many in our day. It is when we can do as we please that our troubles begin, for nothing worthwhile is achieved without discipline. Many times we have seen a lack of discipline in the shootings across the nation. Selfish thinking and lack of self-control seems to rule.
Remember the words in our country’s song America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!
Independence Day celebrations will serve a positive purpose if they lead us to look at our way of life in the larger view of history. The historian and philosopher Arnold Toynbee in his work The Study of History lists 19 great civilizations that have collapsed. He points out that only three of them were conquered by enemies from without. The other 16 crumbled because of weaknesses within: idleness, drunkenness, immorality.
The same conclusion was reached by Edward Gibbon in his classic The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He stated the reasons for the downfall of mighty Rome: the rapid increase of divorce, belittling of sanctity of the home, higher and higher taxes while the public money was wasted, a mad craze for pleasure becoming more and more exciting and brutal, gigantic armaments for war while the nation was destroyed internally, and the decline of religion, with faith fading into mere formality and church attendance deemed unimportant.
Our country is great, not because we have more land or more people or more natural resources than others. We are becoming more and more aware that there are countries that have more of these. The greatness of America stands upon a faithful and accountable dependence on “the Power that has made and preserved us as a nation,” upon the understanding that our “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” “… have been endowed by the Creator, that this nation, under God, must constantly experience a new birth of freedom.” The founders of our nation saw America as the instrument of the mighty purpose of God. They laid the foundations of the American way of life upon Christian principles.
A foreign student was asked whether she would remain in the United States after she completed her work/study program. She said: “You Americans meet when and where you please. You speak as freely as you like, either in criticism or praise of persons and ideas. You have newspapers that give you full accounts of world happenings. You enjoy the benefits of countless inventions to make life interesting and comfortable. The United States are indeed a wonderful land in which to live.”
Then she added, “I should like the advantages of your way of living, but I am afraid I am not a big enough person to live in such liberty.”
The same idea was expressed by an American missionary who was long imprisoned in a Japanese camp during World War II. When he was asked what he thought about during his imprisonment he replied, “The thought that was uppermost in my mind was whether I would be worthy of freedom when I got it.”
Wow! What responsibility, are we up for it? As we celebrate our freedoms this coming July 4th, we should ponder on these things. For God has given us freedom, the freedom to do good, the freedom to accomplish His purposes. What could possibly make us happier?
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month our contributor is Deacon Peter Mueller of St. John’s Catholic Church in Grand Marais.
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