“Declaration” and “Independence”

          Happy Day after the Fourth of July.  Or should that be the Third of July?  Or was it in August?  Yes, yes, and yes.  July 4^th became the settled date to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  The vote to accept the document and action was July 3^rd.  And it wasn’t until August 7^th that the majority of signatures were secured to make it official.

            While we celebrate this holiday with picnics and fireworks, patriotic music and parades, it is also worth our time to look at two words, “declaration” and “independence”, with the eyes of faith.  Particularly as there are so many who are clinging to these two words (they are calling it freedom) as their standard bearer to do whatever they want to do.  A “declaration of independence” from the tyranny of colonial rule placed on this country by the British of that time, is not the same as “I’ll do what I want to do, and I don’t need anyone.”

            Who “declares”?  In our historic faith, it is God who created us, declared us made in God’s Image, and called us into an everlasting relationship called a covenant.  God would be our God and we would be God’s people.  God’s faithfulness to us would last through all time, even when we broke covenant and “declared” ourselves in charge.

            Our “independence” as understood through our faith is in a Holy Relationship.  And the teachings of Jesus tell us that that relationship has two parts:  We are to love God with all our heart, all our mind, and all our souls and our neighbors as ourselves.  Our “independence”, our personhood, is relational.  Our “freedom” is freedom with the context that our freedom should not suppress another’s freedom.

            That leads to some real basic questions that have difficult answers.  Does my freedom of speech mean I have total approval to spew hate speech?  Or to vocally advocate for policies that hurt others just because I don’t like them, or I feel superior to them?  Do I really have the freedom to carry loaded guns around in public and endanger the lives of others?  Where does my freedom end and another’s begin?

            For you were called to freedom, brothers.  Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another.  Galatians 5:13

Rev. Clara