Liberty's Timeless Journey

Liberty is a concept that has been around for a long time.  It is not something that man invented; liberty was conceived in the mind of God before the very dawn of Creation.  Liberty is not something that everyone has, nor has every man in history been blessed with such a privilege, but every person bears a longing for it, inherent to his nature.  Liberty has seen many proverbial ups and downs throughout history, and it seems that America today is in one of those ‘downs.’  My question is one many are pondering: what can we do to restore true liberty to America?  First, I’d like to take a look at the history of liberty, for it is a timeless struggle. 

Travel back with me to approximately 2,000 years before the birth of Christ, and around the world to a beautiful, lush garden in the Middle East called Eden.  Life in that garden was perfect in the fullest sense of the word, and true liberty thrived.  The only two people on earth lived in the garden; they had dominion over the animals and were allowed to eat and enjoy all that God had created – with one condition: that they not touch the fruit of the tree that grew in the middle of the garden.  They obeyed and lived in that glorious, untainted liberty for a length of time – we don’t know exactly how long, but we may guess it was many years.  God’s perfection was spoiled, however, when a serpent came to the woman and convinced her that she could actually have something better than that perfect liberty—that by eating that fruit she could be like God—and she and her husband tasted the forbidden fruit.  They sinned against God, soiling the beauty and perfection of His creation, and from that moment forward, man has been in bondage to sin.

But God didn’t forget his vision of liberty, and generations after that first man and woman he chose a man named Abram through whom he would carry on that design.  He called Abram out of his land—out of bondage to sin—and gave him a new life and a new name: Abraham.  God built the Nation of Israel out of Abraham’s offspring, with the promise that Abraham’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren would become a mighty nation and thrive in God’s plan for liberty.  Soon, however, God’s people were no longer free: they were in captivity in Egypt.  After much suffering under the power-hungry Pharaoh, God called a timid man named Moses to lead his people out of Egypt and into liberty once again.

Israel lived in peace and freedom for many years, under what is today called a Theistic government: it wasn’t a monarchy, or a democracy, or a republic, or a dictatorship.  God, the only wholly just King, was sole ruler of Israel, and spoke through his prophets and judges.  Before long, however, they decided they wanted a king that they could see—they weren’t satisfied to have God ruling directly over them—so God gave Israel a king.  Freedom given by man always results in tyranny, and soon God’s people were in captivity again, sometimes under their own king, and often under the cruel kings of neighboring countries.  Israel fell away from God’s precepts countless times, and each time they were taken into captivity.  They bore the yoke of bondage in Assyria and in Babylon, and the oppression of the Philistines, Persians, Midianites, and others; and God never gave up his plan but liberated them each time.  Throughout all those generations, Israel was captive to sin.

Finally, when the Nation of Israel had long been subject to the tyranny of Rome and the domination of sin, God sent the ultimate Deliverer.  He sent his One and Only Son, who “was sent to heal broken hearts and proclaim liberty to the captives” (Luke 4:18).   Jesus Christ, God’s Son incarnate, took the sins of all humanity upon his shoulders; he brought liberty not only to God’s chosen nation, but also to all of mankind—all one has to do is repent and ask Jesus to free him, and the chains of all manner of evil fall from his wrists and his soul is liberated for eternity!

Still, the struggle for earthly liberty continues.  Travel forward with me to October 31 of the year 1522, when a poor monk nailed a document to the door of the Catholic Church in Wittenberg, Germany.  Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five theses pointed out fallacies in the philosophy of the church and advocated reform.  Luther spoke up for religious liberty and protested the stiff doctrines, rituals, and ecclesiastical structure of the church.  People began to break away from the strict doctrines of Catholicism, but the church recoiled, tightening its grip on the people.  Thus began the battle for religious freedom that eventually gave birth to the United States of America.  This Protestant Reformation spread from Germany into other countries throughout Europe, reaching England in 1529. 

The Anglican Church vacillated for nearly a century between Protestant sympathies and the strict doctrines of the Catholic Church; the period of unrest and indecisiveness culminated in the birth of the Puritan movement.  The Puritans, named for their desire to ‘purify’ the church of Roman Catholic doctrines, were reformers who sought relief from the overbearing Anglican Church.  These seekers of religious liberty finally received it through the Puritan Migration, when nearly twenty thousand Puritans relocated to the ‘New World’ and founded the colony of Massachusetts and commenced the American search for liberty.

 Between 1620, when the first Puritans arrived in Massachusetts, and the mid-1800s, hundreds of thousands more people left their home countries and settled in America.  America has become a melting pot of nationalities, backgrounds, and ideas, but all of the settlers in the New World had in common a search for religious freedom.  There was only one problem.  Free as the first settlers were from the religious oppression they had suffered in Europe, they inadvertently recreated it by defaulting to establishmentarianism themselves!  As time went on, new colonies were founded by leaders who disagreed with the state denominations.  For instance, Roger Williams and a small group of Baptists fled persecution in Massachusetts and founded the colony of Rhode Island.  Similarly, groups of Puritans, Lutherans, Quakers, and various reformed groups such as the Dutch, French, and German Reformed Churches came to America and founded their own colonies.

The framers of our Constitution recognized the danger posed by government-instituted religion, and sought to restore religious freedom as one of the protections enumerated in the Bill of Rights.  Contrary to many assumptions today, their intent was not to protect the government or the state from religion, but to protect religion from the government.  Even since the ratification of the First Amendment, we have seen countless instances of the government attempting to limit freedom of religious expression.  Common misunderstandings and disputes are embodied in the phrase “wall of separation of church and state,” about which I have already written.  The battle for liberty of conscience, though certainly momentous in the history of America, is only one part of a bigger picture.