Daily Java: God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth. (John 4:24)
Freedom is strange. It means so many things to so many people and they are all different.
I was raised in America, of course, like most Americans. But my family came here from somewhere else, again like most people in America.
They came to America to be free. It was a different freedom for all of them.
It may have been economic freedom, or freedom to pursue their own interests. It may have been freedom from oppression.
For many it was the freedom of religion. They didn’t want to be told how to worship and in what churches that worship was acceptable.
Nobody comes to us to make us do otherwise. That is strange to us in America since we have that freedom and take it for granted.
That isn’t the case in many of the Muslim countries. The news (or at least the news that isn’t biased) tells of conversion squads that go through villages in Africa and some of the Asian countries forcibly converting people, maiming and raping those who refuse, killing pastors and leaders.
Of course, you also read of those in America that would like to curtail all mention of Jesus in society. There is even an organization called Americans for the Separation of Church and State that tries hard to squelch all mention of God anywhere.
The liberal school system tries hard to cut any mention of God. It seems that every week, I read of another lawsuit against a school system on behalf of freedom of speech in mentioning God. That may include t shirts with religious comment, prayers at lunch, having a Bible in open view in front of a teacher who is “offended” by it.
And it is a funny thing. Funny in an ironic sense, that is. These people would never be able be able to say what they want to say in any society that wasn’t Christian. It is only under that Christian framework that people have the ability to worship as they please.
Freedom means different things to different people. But to the Christ-follower, it means that he is no longer under the bonds of sin and death. He is free.
And he knows that God loves him. Love brings tremendous freedom.
No comments:
Post a Comment
To comment, post your comment and click the anonymous button. It would be nice if you signed it so I could know who you are.
You are welcome to say anything you want as long as it is nice. If I don't like it, or it is ugly, I will take it off, place it into the garbage disposal, grind it up, and allow it to be flushed into the Gulf of Mexico where it will be eaten by a fish and then excreted where it will lie on the bottom of the ocean until it is covered up by other comments.