Over the past year, our middle school students have been studying a curriculum on church history. We have covered all of the major topics (Nicea, Augustine, Luther, Aquinas) and now, as our time together draws to a close, we are looking at the various ideologies of the 19th century and their influence on the church. Now, we completed this section yesterday, unfortunately closing with a rather dismal discussion of Nazism, which included a lively discussion concerning a comparison I made between the Fuhrer Principle and the Pope...clearly not my best moment. However, the section began, brightly enough, with a look at the idea of "American Individualism" and that lesson prompted me to write this post.
In a rather desperate attempt to jump start the conversation on the American idea of the individual, we treated the kids, and ourselves, to clips of Braveheart and Independence Day. It did everything we hoped it would do and more. The kids were cheering and some, for the first time, began to see Randy Quaid for the gem that he is. However, while Braveheart makes me weep like a baby and Independence Day draws out a deep longing for bar-b-que and Will Smith movies, they also reveal a very emotional attachment to freedom, and that was exactly that point we were trying to make.
Personal freedom and individual liberty had a grand start during the American Revolution and while freedom, equality and liberty are to be desired, they cannot be considered paramount, especially to the Christian. In an attempt to ensure that all people posses these liberties, we have developed the idea of rights. These rights have taken on many different forms during the 250 years that the United States has existed, but I want to consider the legitimacy of these rights. Not whether they are correct political developments, but whether the attitude behind them is the correct attitude to have if we are seeking to imitate the model of Christ.
In I Corinthians, Paul spends a great deal of time scolding the Corinthians for their rather selfish behavior. "Selfish? I thought we were talking about rights, not about being selfish!" Ah, but they are closely connected aren't they?
"But some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol's temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble." I Corinthians 8:7-13
Yes, we have rights. Yes, we oftentimes have knowledge that allows us a freedom that we didn't know before, but boasting in that knowledge and cherishing those rights is not how we are to use them. Instead, we are to hold them loosely, we are to be constantly aware of our brothers and sisters. We should be more concerned with their conscience and their struggles than with our ability to live out our freedoms. This is where things become difficult for me. It fights against my instinct which says, "Why have rights if I can't enjoy them? " or "What is the purpose of gaining freedom if I just subject myself to someone else?" Thankfully, Paul continues:
"For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings." I Corinthians 9:19-23
The Christian life isn't about gaining rights and living the easy life. While devotion to Scripture and to the model Christ set before us brings certain advantages, our focus should be on the Gospel. Earlier in I Corinthians, Paul encouraged his readers to "imitate me, as I imitate Christ" and that imitation is far removed from protecting one's freedom.
"Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, hum humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
