Radio Broadcast 10 July 2005 Talking Points
Is Freedom Christian? Series

Topic today: The Price of Freedom

Before we begin today’s broadcast program we want to
follow up on last week’s discussion by reporting that
across the fruited plain, local governments reacted to
the Supreme Court Eminent Domain decision by
figuratively sending the bulldozers round to idle
expectantly on several of John Q. Public’s front lawns
for example: 
Newark. N.J., officials moved forward with plans to
raze 14 downtown acres and build an upscale condo
development; 
Arnold, Mo., intends to demolish 30 homes, 14
businesses and the local Veterans of Foreign Wars to
make way for a Lowe's Home Improvement store and a
strip mall developed by THF Realty. …
and, there are many more such events taking place..

Ford - We are a long way from seeing the conclusion of
the evil decisions of this last session of the Supreme
Court. But the discussion we planned for today is
connected to the issue of lost freedoms

CW - Dr. Ford wrote a Daily Thought for his e-mail
subscribers titled: Authority and Freedom. It seems to
have touched off an Internet firestorm of people who
strongly disagreed.

Ford – Well, I don’t know whether what I wrote got
things started or not.
My comments were based on Proverbs 29:2:
“When the righteous are in authority, the people
rejoice:
but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.”
Perhaps they just came along at the same time other
people were thinking about the same subject. To my
knowledge no one came out and directly attacked my
paper. Maybe coincidentally they just wrote their own
articles.
My contention was that the struggle for freedom in
this world teaches us about the price of true freedom,
which is spiritual.

CW – Well, people get upset about truth. I know in
Jeremiah (34:16) God condemned the taking of liberty
or freedom.

Ford – God also instituted a Jubilee Year in Israel
where every 50 years a marvelous event was supposed to
take place including setting slaves free.
Leviticus 25: 10 says “And ye shall hallow the
fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the
land unto all the inhabitants thereof it shall be a
jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto
his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his
family.

Ford - Liberty and freedom within this world does not
exist for all. It is the possession of some nations,
among which America is probably the most free for the
moment. There are some freedoms we value:
1.	The freedom to pursue one’s religion, (interfered
with by IRS, the ACLU & others)
2.	to hold and express opinions, (a freedom incumbents
and liberals in Congress want to limit after the last
election)
3.	to vote without duress, 
4.	to own home & land, (a matter that has been now
severely abridged by the Supreme Court decision)
5.	to expect a fair trial, (Which courts have limited
by putting pressure on people to plea bargain…there is
also a joke these days about people being able to get
the best justice money can buy.)
6.	to enjoy privacy when desired, (Which is severely
limited by so many factors we could have an entire
radio program about that.)
7.	to pursue personal happiness within the law, (which
it seems is adversely impacted each time a new Supreme
Court decision comes down.)
8.	to move without hindrance within one’s country as
well as in and out of one’s country, (Which has been
harmed by allowing police to set up roadblocks for
random document checks like the British soldiers did
before the Revolutionary War.)
9.	to improve oneself educationally and (limited by
affirmative action)
10.	to seek for promotion in jobs, (limited by
affirmative action)
11.	to have the full exercise of one’s rights, 
12.	to read newspapers from a free press, and so on,
(But the majority of the press has sold themselves out
to socialist and communist ideals.)
these are the content of the worldly liberty we desire
to enjoy.
My point was that the human struggle for freedom, and
the cost such struggle entails, is necessary to teach
us that the freedom we have in Christ is also
purchased at great price though to us it was given as
the gift of God. If some of the bloggers I read were
arguing with me, they missed my point entirely.

CW- Isn’t it true that freedom is often lost because
the people who have it become careless about
preserving it?

Ford – Absolutely! Exercising and enjoying worldly
freedoms does not specially predispose a person to the
devout practice of religion: Christians and Jews in
America have seen unbridled freedom create a situation
in which “the law of God” is declared to be “sinful”
and the “immoral” is openly advertised and commended
as not only available but good. It has been true in
human history that freedoms won in this world, and the
benefits freedoms bring, often leads to moral decline.

CW – You are saying there is a connection between
freedom and the general morality of a nation? Since
America is declining morally, freedom is being lost.

Ford - No country has perfectly all the personal,
civil, political, legal and cultural freedoms because,
in essence, people themselves are imperfect and either
abuse or stand in the way of some liberties. Living in
a sinful world makes the struggle for freedom
continual, and freedom, once won, is continually at
risk. 
Even in the spiritual dimension, the liberty Christ
has given us might be surrendered by careless and
sinful activity, so that the blessings of our freedom
in Christ are lost. There are parallels between things
of the spirit and flesh:
1. I am no less an American because the freedoms
offered in this land are lost.
2. A Jew was no less a Jew because Israel fell into
sin in the Old Testament.
3. A Christian is no less eternally saved because he
falls into sin for a time.
But the American, the ancient Jew, and the Christian
all suffer loss because sin exists in the realm of
their lives. These are parallels that I think God
allows so that we might observe and learn.

CW – But a Christian believer can be wholly “free in
Christ” and “free in the Spirit” while living in an
evil and Christian persecuting state. His freedom in
Christ does not depend on the liberty available in the
place where he lives.

Ford- This is absolutely true, and those are the
conditions that the majority of Christians live under
today. In the 20th century we are told, more people
were martyred for the cause of Christ than in all of
the previous centuries since the death of our Lord.
Their suffering proves your point.
But there is a parallel we should not ignore. At the
same time Christians were being martyred around the
world two World Wars were fought with the loss of over
70 million lives and nearly 40 million unborn babies
in the United States alone were murdered; the
Holocaust took between six and eight million lives.
Then we have all the other wars that took place such
as the Korean War and Vietnam just to name two. The
struggle of mankind over freedom in this world is
expensive in terms of human life and suffering.
But all of man’s suffering is but a shadow of the cost
God paid to present to men the freedom possible
through faith in Christ.

CW – So why can’t we teach people to be moral and
upright?

Ford - Theodore Roosevelt warned, “to educate a man in
mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to
society.” 
We have a whole generation of people who have been so
educated. What does this say about our outlook for the
future?

CW – People like that would not respect the Ten
Commandments, the Constitution, the rule of law, or
the rights of others. That sounds a lot like the
majority of the people sitting on benches in our court
systems doesn’t it?

Ford – Sure does. Judges who should uphold the moral
standards of our society are in fact tearing those
standards down. But somewhere they had to learn
attitudes contrary to the best interests of the
nation. 
The chickens of amoral and even immoral education have
come home to roost; the picture isn’t pretty, and the
prospects for our future are worrisome indeed.
Millions of our fellow “citizens” actually believe
rampant and gross immorality should be unrestrained,
it is somehow their right. Perverted activists flaunt
themselves, and jam their perversions down our
throats. People even go to the theater and pay to
watch perversion. I believe depravity is threatening
to overthrow the existing moral and political order,
but they claim it is a right and being able to behave
in such ways is good and progressive. 

CW – It is not what our forefathers suffered and died
for is it?

Ford – Samuel Johnson, one of our founding fathers
believed the British had tried to corrupt the
colonists’ morals to keep them in bondage. I am sure
this influenced his commitment to the revolution. I
believe you have done some research on how many died
in the American Revolution?

CW – Out of a population of three and a half million
people, two hundred thousand participated in the war.
Total American deaths from all causes was 10,623. That
is a significant portion of the population, roughly
one in every 320 people, or one in every twenty that
fought. 

Ford – It just goes to show the fundamental assertion
of our broadcast concerning the price of freedom. The
evidence of history is that those who fought in the
American Revolution had a fine appreciation for the
cost of freedom as well as strong religious beliefs
overall. Of course they had the qualities that made
for a successful bid for freedom before the fact. I
mentioned how people are being educated to believe
today. The Founders had a better idea about what
constitutes a true education. To them an education in
mind and morals, the temporal and the spiritual,
theory and practical reality, were the order of the
day. They believed people who fail to govern their
passions cannot  successfully govern themselves. Think
about it. 

CW – So, if you want to preserve freedom in this world
you must be moral, and if you want to enjoy freedom in
Christ you must live morally and upright.

Ford – Correct. I find it very interesting that 140
years after the Civil War, which revisionists claim to
have been fought over slavery, instead of the real
reason State’s rights, slavery still exists in the
world. In this country, you hear people who make a
living from convincing their fellows they cannot
succeed based on their own merit; they talk like
slavery had been an exclusively American problem. But
it was not, and I think slavery will continue as a
testimony of that spiritual slavery most of the world
willingly sells themselves into.

CW – I don’t believe I have ever heard anyone express
such an idea. Tell me more.

Ford – Let me use the nation of Niger as an example.
In that county more than 870,000 people - about seven
percent of the country's population - still live in
slavery. Slavery is a long ingrained tradition in this
poor landlocked country of 11 million people on the
southern edge of the Sahara. 
	Niger achieved independence from France in 1960.
That’s right slavery was going on in Niger in 1960
under the French. Many of the enslaved people are
actually inherited property. In other words their
parents were slaves before them. In Africa, Niger,
Mauritania and the Sudan are considered the main
countries were slavery persists but they are not the
only countries where this is going on to this day.
	One Tuareg chief said of the slaves. "They are
victims who don't want to leave us". According to
university professor, El Back Adam, Niger's slaves
refuse to leave their masters despite the terrible
conditions in which they live, because at least "they
have a roof over their head and something to eat."
>From what I learned while living in North Africa in
1968 after the Six Day War this statement has a ring
of truth.

CW – Explain what slavery symbolizes.

Ford – Physical slavery in the world, and the fact
people in slavery are often unwilling to accept being
set free, stands to symbolize the condition of people
sold into spiritual slavery and unwilling to accept
the high price the Lord Jesus Christ has paid for
their freedom. They would rather have the crumbs of
their bondage than perfect liberty in Christ.

CW – Well today’s discussion has certainly put a new
slant on freedom and the price it costs to obtain it.
Even though the freedom enjoyed by believers in Christ
Jesus is radically different from the Freedom enjoyed
by a citizen of the U.S.A. a relationship exists. Of
course, a person can simultaneously enjoy both
Freedoms, Christian freedom to the full and worldly
freedom guardedly, for the latter, unlike freedom in
Christ may lead to sinful behaviour. Do you have a
last word?

Ford – I have a poem I would like to share:
I watched the flag pass by one day
It fluttered in the breeze
A young Marine saluted it,
And then he stood at ease.

I looked at him in uniform 
So young, so tall, so proud, 
With hair cut square and eyes alert 
He'd stand out in any crowd

I thought how many men like him 
Had fallen through the years.
How many died on foreign soil 
How many mothers' tears? 

How many pilots' planes shot down? 
How many died at sea 
How many foxholes were soldiers' graves?
No, freedom isn't free.

I heard the sound of Taps one night, 		
When everything was still, 			
I listened to the bugler play 			
And felt a sudden chill. 	

I wondered just how many times 
That Taps had meant "Amen,"
When a flag had draped a coffin
Of a brother or a friend.

I thought of all the children,
Of the mothers and the wives
Of fathers, sons and husbands
With interrupted lives

I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea
Of unmarked graves in Arlington
No, freedom isn't free

Enjoy Your Freedom & I hope you know of that freedom
available in Christ, and
God Bless Our Troops