Freedom and False Freedom

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

There's a tendency in American Christianity to equate what scripture calls "freedom" with the “freedom” vaunted in the Declaration of Independence. That’s probably the essence of 90% of the “4th of July” sermons every year.

It’s a false equivalence.   America's founding doctrine is that freedom is a matter of exercising our “inalienable rights”…or as we call them in current political jargon, "entitlements"...and defending those "rights, by violence if necessary.

Jesus said otherwise.  He said freedom is a matter of knowing TRUTH (John 8:32).

If Jesus is right, the enemy’s greatest lie may be that by demanding, or even warring for, our “rights,” we can “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

Brother Appolus, in his blog "A Call to the Remnant," gets Jesus' teaching about freedom and "rights:" and even more, Jesus' example: exactly right: “Would you be free today ? Lay down your rights.”