Tag: True Freedom

OUR FIRST FREEDOM

Because this coming U.S. Independence Day (Saturday, July 4th, 2026) is the 250th birthday of our United States of America, I’ve decided to make it the topic of my June newsletter article.

Two and a half centuries ago in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, delegates to the Continental Congress declared independence from Britain, appealing to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and holding as self-evident the truth that we are “endowed by [our] Creator” with the “unalienable” right to life, right to liberty, and right to pursue happiness. As American Citizens and Lutheran Christians, we pause to give thanks to God for the remarkable blessings of liberty that we enjoy in this land of the free, and especially for the principle that stands as the primary foundation of American civics, society and culture: that is, The Freedom of Religion (our “First Freedom”).

The great First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution begins not with the freedoms of speech, press, or assembly, but with the freedom of religion and religious expression: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Our founders placed religious freedom at the top of the list, first and foremost, because they understood that this right is the root from which all other liberties grow (including speech, press and assembly). When the human heart is free to respond to God’s call to righteousness and piety, the whole society flourishes. Remove that foundation, and even the best-written constitutions eventually become empty words. Religious liberty is not merely one freedom among many; it is the soil in which our American Republic was planted.

This truth resonates deeply for our Lutheran confession. Martin Luther taught that the gospel of Jesus Christ must be proclaimed freely, that faith is a matter of our human conscience transformed by the Word of God freely shared and heard, and that the Church and the State each have their proper God-given spheres. So, generations of Lutherans have not only valued the many economic opportunities afforded by our industrious nation but also the freedom to confess, profess and assemble “in accordance with the divine Word” (Augsburg Confession). Here, under the protection of our First Freedom, our congregations have been able to baptize, teach, worship, and serve, without fear of interference or forced conformity by the State.

Moreover, freedom of religion has shaped our national character far beyond the church doors. It fostered a culture that values the dignity of the individual, encourages free association and voluntary charity, and insists that government itself is under God (in a general non-sectarian sense). It has allowed people of every creed and religion (or none) to contribute their best gifts of citizenship while protecting all from coercion by the State in matters of the spirit. In a nation of diverse ethnicities and traditions, our First Freedom has been the principal foundation that makes “E Pluribus Unum” possible without tyranny of conscience and soul. In fact, every single totalitarian system (such as Marxism) always targets the free exercise of religion for destruction, because a people who look to a higher power and authority than the State is a people who cannot be subjugated. Therefore, we sing in My Country, ‘Tis of Thee…

My native country, thee,

Land of the noble free,

Thy name I love;

I love thy rocks and rills,

Thy woods and templed hills.

My heart with rapture thrills

Like that above.

As we mark this coming Semiquincentennial (or Quarter-Millennium as I prefer to say), let us commemorate this national anniversary with deep gratitude for our imperfect yet exceptional and laudable nation. Additionally, let us observe it with heartfelt prayer and good citizenship. For the Holy Scriptures declare: “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone… and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity” (1 Timothy 2:1-2). Consequently, giving thanks to God for the liberties we enjoy, we pray for our leaders and our fellow citizens. And we resolve to use our freedom rightly as it says in Galatians: “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for sin, but through love become enslaved to one another… If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another” (Galatians 5:13-15).

On Sunday, July 5th, many congregations of the Church of Jesus Christ throughout our country will gather for worship with national songs and patriotic hymns. May these celebrations be marked by joyful thanksgiving, recognizing that “every good and perfect gift” — including the gift of our First Freedom under the Constitution of the United States — comes “from the Father of lights” (James 1:17).

May the Lord continue to preserve this First Freedom for generations yet to come, that the good news of Jesus Christ may be freely proclaimed and that we may serve our nation as Christ’s Kingdom Ambassadors in a world that still groans for the ultimate freedom from enslavement to death and decay (see Romans 8:18-23).

Together in Christ, Pastor Tim

THE REALLY REAL STRAWBERRY OF GOD

(I was asked by a parishioner on Pentecost Sunday several weeks ago for a printed copy of my sermon for that morning, so I’ve decided to also use this sermon as the basis for my July/August article.)

Have you ever eaten any kind of wild berry? If you have, then you might have noticed a difference in flavor from the garden-variety that’s been selectively bred vs. the wild-variety of the natural world. And there’s even some taste differences between berries that have been farmed conventionally (with chemical pesticides and artificial fertilizers) vs. berries that have been farmed more organically.

My favorite kind of berry is the strawberry for sure, and the kind of strawberry we’re all most familiar with is the conventionally farmed garden-variety strawberry that’s the descendant of the wild strawberry. And of course, the garden-variety strawberry that we’re most accustomed to is a mass produced strawberry breed that has been designed and grown to be consistently the biggest, most beautiful and juiciest strawberry possible. These strawberries are still technically real strawberries, but they’re selectively grown using only the best GMO seeds. So the supermarket strawberries that we’re used to eating are essentially the very pinnacle of what a strawberry could be.

Now because the flavor of the strawberry is so delicious, people have also devised ways to distill its flavor down to be even more concentrated than the flavor of the strawberry itself. And wanting to make it even more powerful, we’ve taken that distilled juice to make delicious strawberry candy, with a heavy dose of sugar and a little sodium added to it. Then, because real strawberry juice and pure cane sugar are too expensive, the large scale candy maker has decided to use artificial strawberry flavor along with high fructose corn syrup, and they’ve even bumped up the sodium a little bit more.

Then the soft drink company comes along, and says they’re going to make a soda pop out of the popular mass produced strawberry candy. And then the gas station minimart people come along and say they’re going to make a slurpee that’s flavored like the soda, that was flavored like the mass produced candy, that was flavored like the original candy, that was distilled from the genetically modified strawberry, that was based upon the wild strawberry of the real natural world. So by the time we go from the wild strawberry through all the various iterations down to the slurpee, we have something that tastes vaguely strawberry-ish, but isn’t anything like a real strawberry.

Consequently, if someone buys that slurpee and they start drinking it as they’re walking along the road, and they see off the road some funny little red things that kind of look like the picture of the red berries on the plastic cup of their slurpee, then they just might pick one of those berries and take a bite. And they would realize that it sort of tastes a little bit like their slurpee, but it’s not nearly as flavorful. So they decide to stick with their slurpee.

Brothers and sisters, we live in a time of hyper-reality, where things are supposedly now more real than real — more strawberry than a real strawberry, so to speak. There are the hyper-realities of virtual reality and virtual community, for instance, but all this unreality of our present era is no accident. In fact, sociologists say that our society has moved out of the modern era into what they call the post-modern era.

In the modern era, society accepted the idea that there is such a thing as objective reality. However, in our new postmodern era, there’s only your truth and my truth — there’s only subjective reality. So in this present upside-down era, there is no such thing as an objective reality that is universally true. It’s like Pontius Pilate cynically stating to Jesus, “What is truth?” (see John 18:37-38). Just like the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate, today’s postmodern mindset assumes there is no such thing as “the truth.” It assumes there is only power, and whichever narrative can muster the most muscle to support it is the winner. But what do the Holy Scriptures declare about this?

Several of our Bible readings on Pentecost Sunday 2021 declared that there is such a thing as universal truth. In our Gospel Reading from John 15:26-27 and 16:4b-15, our Lord Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit of God twice as the “Spirit of Truth.” And in our Epistle Reading from Second Corinthians 3:17–4:9, the Apostle Paul refers to the plain truth of the gospel. So for Christians, there is indeed such a thing as objective reality and universal truth, and God is the source of all truth (both natural truth and spiritual truth). Whether revealed by the natural world through science and reason, or revealed by the supernatural world through faith and spirit, God is the source and foundation of all of it.

But we’re now being told these days that the distinctions between mother, father and child are unjust power categories from a bygone era. We’re being told that a mother is now a “birthing parent,” and that a child must give their permission for a diaper change. Give me a break! And some educators now want us to believe that 2+2=4 is a “subjective cultural construct,” and not objectively true. Well, just try rocketing astronauts to Mars without 2+2=4. Good luck with that!

While there’s some usefulness to the various critical deconstructions of absolutely everything these days, I’m convinced that the radical cynicism, criticism and deconstruction which characterize our present postmodern era are ultimately a dead end road. It’s essentially what our passage from Second Corinthians 3 and 4 would call “the god of this age” — what we might call the god of this era — and it’s a god that continues to try to blind hearts and minds to the grace and truth of Almighty God.

However, the “Spirit of Truth” will guide us through it all. Like Dante in Dante’s Inferno, we must pass through the fires of this present age before we come to the glorious return to the harmonious natural reality of Eden that God promises us through Jesus Christ our Savior — the glorious return to the really real natural strawberry (so to speak) of God’s original blessing in the Garden.

The Apostle Paul says in our Second Corinthians reading, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,” and our Lord Jesus says in our Gospel of John reading, this freedom-giving Spirit of the Lord is the “Spirit of Truth.” So it’s clear that these two aspects of God’s Spirit are inseparably linked together. Freedom and Truth… Truth and Freedom… You can’t have one without the other.

Therefore, if we stand firm upon our Judeo-Christian belief in objective reality and universal truth — unlike the false gospel of the postmodern god of this era — then we will be grounded in the really real and we will be truly free indeed.

Together in Christ, Pastor Tim