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Liberty or Security? Which is most important in the long run? It is impossible to have 100% of both liberty and security in this natural world. Liberty, of necessity, must involve some risks. The major one is that you have to trust your neighbor to respect your God-given rights of life, liberty, and ownership of property. Likewise, your neighbor must be able to trust you in the same way. This is why our Founders warned us that we couldn’t maintain this Republic, with its great amount of liberty for the individual, without most of our people knowing the religion of Jesus Christ in the pure way that Jesus gave it. If I know that I will “reap what I sow”, both in this world, and in the world to come (Galatians 6:7), I have a strong reason to respect your rights; knowing that God Himself is judging me in my actions. If I’ve had those truths hidden from me both in the home and the school, then I don’t know that I will surely “reap what I’m now sowing”; thus, I have no deterrent to my own selfish desires, leaving your rights at risk.
Thus, God gave us civil government based on His Ten Commandments in order to aid us in keeping the last six of those commands toward our neighbor. Government “bears not the sword in vain” (Romans 13:1-4); thus, the threat of punishment becomes a strong deterrent to one person stealing another’s “life, liberty, or property”. But the great danger in a Republic is that those in government will take away the rights of the citizens they are supposed to be protecting: Especially in a crisis. Because in a crisis they can take away much of the liberty of the people by convincing them they are doing it to protect them. This is why we must always keep the long-range vision for liberty in mind. Lest in the short-sightedness of an immediate crisis, government servants steal our liberty in the name of giving us more security: Actions—like a Governor shutting down church meetings (taking away religious liberty) in the name of protecting us from a virus; in other words, giving us security. That can seem good for the moment; but what if that Governor never gives back all the liberty he took? What if, even after saying we can go back to meeting, he still expects us to look to him for permission to meet? That’s the subtle way dictatorial governments have always removed the rights of the people: Getting the people to give up liberty for “promised” security.
This is why James Madison who wrote most of our Constitution, including the First Amendment (which guarantees our God-given rights of worship, assembly, speech, and press), warned us not to trade liberty to stop an immediate crisis. He wrote,
“It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties…The free men in America…saw all the consequences in the [root cause], and they avoided [those] consequences by denying the principle.”
(Foundation for Moral Law Newsletter, 4/23/2020)
To put that in Barney Fife language: “You nip it in the bud!”
George Washington warned us about giving up our rights as citizens, so a government servant can protect us in a crisis. He stated in his Farewell Address to the nation:
“…for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”
God says in Proverbs,
“Where there is no vision, the people perish…” (Proverbs 29:18)
Do you have the long-term vision of preserving liberty?
Think about it; because if you don’t, someone else will do your thinking for you—and for your children! And you won’t like what that brings to you. I’m Don Pinson; this has been Think About It.