Sunday Class @ 9am; Worship @ 10am & 5pm
Articles
Freedom Is a Two-edged Sword
Last summer on the Fourth of July I found myself in a group listening to a short patriotic address. The speaker talked about the meaning of Independence Day. He spoke of the men who signed the Declaration, their courage, their dedication. He reminded us of our heritage of freedom, how precious it is, and how jealously we should guard it.
We applauded when he was through. But suddenly, as the applause died away, a voice spoke from the crowd: “Why don’t you tell them the whole truth?”
Startled, we all looked around. The words had come from a young man in a tweed jacket with untidy hair and intense, angry eyes. He might have been a college student, a poet, a Peace Corps worker, almost anything.
“Why don’t you tell them that freedom is the most dangerous gift anyone can receive?” he said. “Why don’t you tell them that it’s a two-edged sword that will destroy us unless we learn how to use it, and soon? Why don’t you make them see that we face a greater challenge than our ancestors ever did? They only had to fight for freedom. We have to live with it!” He stared for a moment at our blank, uncomprehending faces. Then he shrugged his way through the crowd and was gone.
Now, almost a year later, I find myself still thinking about that young man. I think he was a person seized by a swift and stunning insight, and he had the courage to shout it out. He was right: Freedom is dangerous; it can be a two-edged blade. Look at this country today. All around us there seems to be a drastic decline in morals: cheating where once there was honesty, promiscuity where once there was decency, crime where once there was respect for law. Everywhere there seems to be a growing laxness, an indifference, a softness that terrifies people who think about it.
And what lies behind all this? Perhaps the angry young man was trying to tell us the truth. Perhaps we do have a blind and misguided concept of liberty. Perhaps we are using the freedom of choice gained for us by our forefathers to choose the wrong things.
Ever since our country won its independence, something in us has been deeply suspicious of authority. “Give us more freedom!” has been our constant cry. This was valid when it was directed against tyranny or oppression or exploitation, but we have pushed the concept far beyond that. The freedom we now claim has come to mean freedom from all unpleasantness: from hardship, from discipline, from the stern voice of duty, from the pain of self-sacrifice.
“Give us fewer rules, or more elastic ones!” This demand has weakened our courts of justice and shaken the foundations of the church.
“Give us more leisure and less work!” This one sounds enlightened and alluring, but at the end of the road lie sterility and boredom.
“Give us the freedom to decide moral questions for ourselves!” This one ignores the fact that once morals become relative it is hard to justify any morality at all.
As a nation, in short, we have clamored for total freedom. Now we have just about gotten it, and we are facing a bleak and chilling truth: We have flung off one external restraint after another, but in the process we have not learned how to restrain ourselves.
It is this truth that causes, deep in our souls, the uneasiness we feel despite all our prosperity and power. It is the knowledge that we have abandoned our ancient certainties but have so far found nothing to replace them. It is the premonition that unless we learn to control ourselves this climate of ultra freedom may be replaced by a climate of repression. It is the fear that if we do not learn to guard and preserve our own best values, some form of tyranny will surely attempt to take them from us. This is no idle fear. It took Babylon 1000 years, and Rome 500, to decline and fall, but we have no such comfortable margin. Time and distance have diminished; the clock of history ticks faster.
So maybe on this Independence Day we should be thinking not so much about the freedom from tyranny that our ancestors won, as about the chaos that freedom can bring to those who do not use it wisely. We should ponder the truth of the old saying, “A man’s worst difficulties begin when he is able to do what he likes.” We should face up to the fact that, in the proportion to which we dismiss our external restraints, each of us has a solemn moral obligation to restrain himself.
This can never be easy. But the time has come in our national life when we need to look straight at some of the ugly areas in our society – the divorce statistics, the crime statistics, the weakening of family ties, the swirling clouds of racial hatred, the sex explosion on our campuses, the grim persistence of alcoholism, the death toll on our highways – and ask ourselves to what extent these things stem from a distorted concept of freedom which leaves men free to be selfish, free to be lazy, free to be ignoble, free to be weak.
If personal freedom of choice is our goal and our ideal as a nation, then our first fundamental choice must be not to abuse that freedom. This is what independence really means: self discipline. And this we would do well to remember when we see the flag we love blazing against the sky on Independence Day.
------
Preacher’s point — Paul warned that with freedom must come the knowledge that not everything is good to do, that we must still maintain self control instead of giving other things control over us (1 Cor 6:12). “For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” (Gal 5:13). Peter told us how to use our freedom: “Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondservants of God.” (1 Pet 2:16). As the Lord told Jeremiah, “Surely I will set you free for purposes of good” (Jer 15:11a), so must we use the freedom we have today.
