The Standard July 15, 2023
Some good friends recently returned from a mission trip to Nicaragua with Vanceboro Global Methodist Church. As is typically the case, this experience was probably more life-changing for the Americans than for the locals. Participating in such a trip, we usually are struck by the joy many Christians around the globe have despite extreme poverty. Susan said that anyone who had major complaints about living in the United States needed to check out life in a place like Nicaragua. My father-in-law’s widow tells of her family’s experience when they had to flee for their lives from there after the Sandinistas, a socialist political party, took over the country back in 1979. Repression and human rights abuses abound in dictatorships like Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. Take a look at a map showing dictatorships around the world. The majority of the land mass in Africa and Asia is included. We hardly can imagine the lack of freedoms in places like Libya, Russia, Turkey and China.
Like every country, we have very dark parts in our history. We have come a long way in our goal “to form a more perfect union” and will keep working on it. With our recent cook-outs and fireworks we celebrated the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. On July 4, 1776 the Continental Congress declared that the 13 colonies were free from being part of the British Empire. Many of the original colonists fled religious persecution in hopes that they could practice their faith in freedom in the New World. According to The Thomas Jefferson Center, “The Founding Fathers felt that religious freedom was paramount to the functioning of a moral free society. Early Americans entwined views of liberty along with religious beliefs that one could not separate from the other. Religion was an essential part of everyday life in the newly formed United States. Though the Founding Fathers felt it was important to separate church and state it was essential that religious morals prevailed in all government dealings. George Washington believed that religion and morality were the pillars of society and provided the greatest possibility for human happiness. The Founders believed, because of our disposition and habits, that religion and morality were essential elements of political prosperity.”
The Bible is filled with the theme of spiritual freedom.
“To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’” “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:31-32, 36) In the apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, he spells out how each Christian was formerly in bondage to sin but was set free from the law of sin and death in Christ.
“But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life inChrist Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:17-23)
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1-4)
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