What Does Freedom Mean to You?

Today we celebrate the 247th anniversary of the Second Continental Congress’s Declaration of Independence. On July 4, 1776 roughly 56 delegates “declared” that the thirteen American colonies were a new nation and no longer part of the British Empire.

And here we are many generations removed, and although our nation may have gained her independence, our country continues to struggle with exactly what that means.

What does freedom mean to you? That you get to do whatever you want? If that’s the case then law, marriage, religion, friendship, in fact any kind of relational connection where we submit ourselves for the good of others is cast aside and chaos reigns.

Most people will accept some limits to their freedom. You’re not free to harm or murder someone. You’re not free to steal from someone. The bond of marriage means—or should mean—that you’re not free to sleep with whomever you want. The bond of parenting means—or should mean—that you’re not free to abuse your children or even let them have “free reign.”

Most of us accept the fact that we have freedom within limits—but here’s the key question: Who gets to set those limits? Who decides where to put the boundary markers so that the order of society exists, and people are indeed “free” to live their lives in the confines of safety and security for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”?

Stanley Hauerwas was a brilliant professor at Duke University who wrote, “moral life cannot be found by each person pursuing his or her own options.” In relativism, all we have is a set of options. The only way we will ever learn the meaning of freedom is by the formation of a virtuous people centered on transcendent values.

As we remember the brave declaration of the 56 delegates from the Second Continental Congress, may we heed the warning given by Ravi Zacharias: “Freedom is not the same thing as autonomy. Freedom does not mean I am a law unto myself. Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, speaking to a hostile university audience that jeered him, stopped in the middle, and in non-regal language said, `Shut up! Freedom can be destroyed as easily by making a mockery of it as it can by its retraction.’”

“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free . . . I am . . . the truth” (Jesus—John 8:32; 14:6).