{"id":6921,"date":"2011-11-16T01:38:52","date_gmt":"2011-11-16T09:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=6921"},"modified":"2011-11-19T01:41:43","modified_gmt":"2011-11-19T09:41:43","slug":"god-has-a-lot-to-do-with-it-christianity-and-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2011\/11\/god-has-a-lot-to-do-with-it-christianity-and-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"God Has a Lot to Do with It, Christianity and Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Chuck<\/a>
Chuck Colson<\/figcaption><\/figure> by Chuck Colson –
\nA recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times<\/em> asked \u201cWhat\u2019s God got to do with it?\u201d The \u201cit\u201d being referred to was the security and freedom that Americans enjoy and often take for granted.<\/p>\n

The answer to the question is \u201cquite a bit,\u201d and arguing otherwise requires taking something else for granted: our way of life\u2019s debt to Christianity.<\/p>\n

The man asking and answering the question was Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic magazine. Shermer took exception to the words of a recent House resolution to keep \u201cIn God We Trust\u201d as the national motto. The resolution read: \u201cWhereas if religion and morality are taken out of the marketplace of ideas, the very freedom on which the United States was founded cannot be secured.\u201d <\/p>\n

Shermer was troubled by the \u201cbelief that religion has a monopoly on morality,\u201d especially, he says, \u201cin this age of science and technology, computers and cyberspace, and liberal democracies securing rights and freedoms for oppressed peoples all over the globe.\u201d <\/p>\n

According to Shermer what really makes people \u201cfeel free and secure\u201d are things like \u201cthe rule of law,\u201d \u201ceducation for the masses,\u201d the establishment of \u201cfair and just laws,\u201d and the \u201cequitable enforcement of those fair and just laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Shermer doesn\u2019t tell us is that things like the rule of law, mass education, and the other things he credits with making our freedom and security possible, didn\u2019t spring fully-formed out of nowhere. They are part of Christianity\u2019s legacy to the West.<\/p>\n

Take the rule of law. It was Christianity that taught the West that rulers are not free to do as they pleased and that they are not above the law. According to John Calvin, resisting tyranny was the duty of those \u201cwho desire that every individual should preserve his rights, and that all men may live free from injury.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same can be said about mass education and even the science that Shermer puts so much stock in. They are the result of what Christianity taught: that God created the world, and we were called to explore every aspect of it.<\/p>\n

Most of all, our ideas about what constitutes a free and secure society are derived from Christianity. Political scientist Glenn Tinder has written about how much of what we celebrate in our society, like the \u201crespect for the individual and a belief in the essential equality of all human beings,\u201d has \u201cstrong roots in the union of the spiritual and the political achieved in the vision of Christianity.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was Christianity, you see, that taught the West that all human beings are created in the image of God. Without that understanding, the very words of the Declaration of Independence, \u201cthat all Men are created equal, that they endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights,\u201d could never have been written.<\/p>\n

Without this Christian vision we wouldn\u2019t have the freedom and security that Shermer ascribes to science, technology, and politics. And I give a very concrete and current example of this on today\u2019s \u201cTwo-Minute Warning,\u201d which I urge you to go see at ColsonCenter.org.<\/p>\n

The issue isn\u2019t what\u2019s inscribed on our money but whether Americans understand what makes our way of life possible. Sadly, I\u2019m afraid the answer to that right now is \u201cno, they don\u2019t.” So it\u2019s up to us, the Church, to explain just how vital the Christian faith has been \u2014 and still is \u2014 to our rights and freedoms.<\/p>\n

HT: Break Point<\/a> (read full article)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Chuck Colson – A recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times asked \u201cWhat\u2019s God got to do with it?\u201d The \u201cit\u201d being referred to was the security and freedom that Americans enjoy and often take for granted. The answer to the question is \u201cquite a bit,\u201d and arguing otherwise requires taking something else for … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[68,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-freedom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}