To Secure These Rights

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

This statement, and the resulting Constitution that logically flowed from this premise, is based in two deeper and ancient truths.

The first truth is positive: that all people are created in the Image of God, therefore each individual is granted by Him dignity and value equally. While there may be distinctions of power and authority in the institutions that God gave them, there is no person or people that can lay claim to having greater value or worth or of being of finer substance than any other human. We are all at our very core image-bearers. We are all ultimately and finally accountable to the potter who made us, the clay. The king, the queen, the servant, the slave: they are our brothers and sisters when in the grace of God. We are all His creation. When we stand at the judgment seat of God we stand as equals.

The second is negative: that all people are sinful. We are prone to desire power and authority over one another. We seek power either as oligarchs or by the tyranny of the masses. We all want to be who only God can be. The answers to life's woes cannot be solved by a simple majority. Even in majority rule, people are sinful, and sinful majorities will still commit sinful atrocities. Both democracy and oligarchy are prone to corruption from the mere fact that people are not at their very core "good."

The implication of those two truths are revolutionary. The answers to the evil of human rulers is not more evil human rulers.

The answer is freedom.

Not freedom to sin and do whatever it is I wish to do with my life.

Freedom to submit myself as a slave to God. Freedom to associate oneself with the church that I believe best allows for me to submit myself to God as King and rightful ruler of my life.

Inherent in the Constitution is a healthy pessimism towards the goodness of humanity. Human governments are not capable of creating societies of flourishing and prosperity by replacing unmerciful tyrants with merciful tyrants. Nor does human government have the wisdom to direct its people to God. Human flourishing is found only in the grace of Christ that is experienced and lived out in His Bride the Church. Those who attempted to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth in turn created their own kingdom, a kind of hell where those who sincerely sought after submission to God were persecuted by those who laid claim to doing the same. The government was attempting to do what only the church could.

So the American government was founded on the premise that the government's role is to secure (not provide) each individual person freedom in order to submit their lives to the only one who could perfectly rule over them: God. It was a deep humility that they could not do what only God could do in the hearts of man.

That is why freedom is important. Not simply to allow people to do whatever it is that they wish to do, but for the deeper purpose of allowing others to pursue submission to God without hindrance. For humanity is not God and no institution made up of humans can institute the precepts of God. But only the Church indwelled by the Holy Spirit can and should.

Principles of course are not people. Principles may be derived from certain truths and people may ignore them, as we are of course prone to do.

The greatest example of this, and a sure testimony of the evil in the hearts of men, was the existence of slavery in complete juxtaposition to the very founding principles the new government established. A society that preached inequality of humanity and the propensity of people to absolutely rule over one another, could not endure forever in a nation that claimed the exact opposite in its very pillars.

As the Union Army sought to right the wrong of this treachery, our honor as a people also depends on ensuring those principles are not only written down, but are lived out. The failure of humanity to live out the principles it claims to live by only proves the truthfulness of those principles further.

I am not foolish enough to believe that the Church of God is in danger if America ever does fall beyond redemption of its own principles. To say that His Kingdom depends on an earthly nation like the United States would be disgraceful, and would invalidate my brothers and sisters who live in His grace while being persecuted in other countries. But I believe that protecting the dignity of our people that was bestowed on them by their creator, and to protect them from tyranny is what it means to seek justice as image-bearers of God. To surrender our authority and control to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords is humility on display in the likeness of Christ who counted equality with God as something not to be grasped. It is what is right.

As we celebrate this 4th of July, I am thankful for our freedom. I am thankful for the courage of those who sought to defend it. And I pray each of you enjoy this day.

"A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning Government and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for preeminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have in turn divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other, than to cooperate for their common good...A pure democracy can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole...and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths...A republic, by which I mean a Government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking." - James Madison, Essay 10, the Federalist Papers