Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 24, 2011

Cecil B. DeMille?s film The Ten Commandments is neither an authoritative history lesson nor a rigorous sermon, but it does contain at least one unassailable insight. In an early scene, a defiant Joshua, before the Exodus, tells an Egyptian overlord: ?God made men; men made slaves.? We were created to be free, not to be in bondage to those who presume to rule us.

Abraham, whom the scriptures describe as the Friend of God, was a stateless man. Through faith he upheld God?s perfect law of liberty in a world otherwise surrendered to violence and corruption. He sought to resolve property disputes peacefully, and used force only to rescue his kinsman, Lot. When the King of Sodom offered to reward Abraham with plundered property, Abraham ? invoking God?s law ? declined.

Sin is the source of bondage ? spiritual and political. James Madison pointed out that government is the largest of all reflections on fallen human nature, which includes the sinful impulse to aggress against the person and property of others. Unfortunately, rather than reining in that impulse, political government institutionalizes it.

As Abraham and other Biblical patriarchs demonstrated, it is possible to live God?s law without a political government. But every political government involves institutionalized violations of that law.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.