Tag Archives: LIBERTY

LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS…


I going to take a little different approach but one that is integral to who I am and what I believe.  There is so much confusion, chaos, bitterness, and vitriol in America, and the world today is disturbing and destructive.  It is not relegated to one ethnicity or one political ideology.  It is even present in some of Christendom and that is doubly disturbing.

Our Founding Fathers presented the Declaration of Independence as an appeal to the British Crown to reconcile their differences while stating the foundational beliefs of the colonist.  Let me cite the second paragraph in part as my catalyst to unpackage what I desire and believe needs to be said.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

There is much in that but the central part of their message not only to the British Crown, and the other colonist but to those of us centuries away was powerful.  It speaks of self-evident truths that cannot be overlooked nor diminished in value.  Their first declaration was to recognize that all people are created by God and therefore have equal standing with God.  All are not equal in talent or ability.  All are not equal in their determination to excel, but all are equal in that they are creations of the Almighty and none are more important or lesser important than the others.  It seems that this is missed in today’s world where we place value on ethnicity, status, ability, looks, and many other things.  We fail to see every human being as important to and created by God.  No matter their ideology or faith.

The second was that each of those created beings has been and is endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.  Rights that can only come from the Creator of all things.  Rights that no one, no government, no church, and no earthly potentate has the right to infringe.  They are unalienable which means they are not to be separated, given away, or taken away, they are inalienable.  They are undeniable and uninfringeable but in today’s world, many within the whole of society and government believe those rights are not permanent and uninfringeable.  That opens the door to some terrible consequences and conditions.

Among those unalienable rights was the Right to Life and all that life entails.  Not just to breathe but to live the life that God opens to us.  It is to live with the freedom to pursue that life without fear of an overreaching government or group impeding that progress and pursuit.  Among those unalienable rights listed were Liberty and all that it includes.  It is more than being without chains it is to be free, free to speak, free to believe, free to think, free to worship, and free to be who God has made us to be.  If we are mandated with what we can think, speak, or believe we do not have Liberty.  Then the right to pursue Happiness.  It includes a state of well-being and contentment that can reach the level of Joy.  Joy is not contingent upon externals but is a result of the heart’s condition.  Happiness is contingent upon externals and if we are restricted from our right to Life and Liberty, Happiness is virtually impossible in the natural. 

There is a condition in today’s world that is worsening and being justified based on bias, political, religious, social, and in almost every aspect of human existence.  That condition is addressed by the apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 3.  In the first nine verses of that chapter, Paul called our attention to the attitude and actions of people in the Last Days.

In the Tree of Life Version, it says, “…in the last days hard times will come.”  Hard times?  Haven’t there been hard times for centuries if not millenniums?  Of course, there have been, but this word in Greek is chalepos which stems from the root chasma which means to gape or yawn.  It is a chasm or vacancy.  That is interesting, a chasm or vacancy in what?  In moral standards and recognition of the very thing, the Founders included in the Declaration of Independence, the unalienable rights, and the recognition of God as Creator.

Then the apostle Paul delves into a detailed list of characteristics that will be more pronounced than any generation.  There will be the deification of the self, the level of covetousness will reach a zenith, and the love for and drive to have wealth will be the driving factor.  It will be a time when people feel entitled to what someone else has and covetousness will blind people as to what is right, moral, and logical. 

Can we not conclude that in today’s society we are hearing incredible boasts out of pride and many in today’s society and politics have no fear of blaspheming God?  We began in the 1960s opening the door to destruction and the return of the diabolical forces of darkness.  We began taking steps to exorcise God from the public square and on the heels of that first action we saw the sexual revolution and as time progressed more and more rulings to banish God from all things government and public. 

The result of that could only be the rise of the powers of darkness.  As the moral fabric of our society crumbled the rise of an amoral and immoral push would replace it.  It is a principle that is seen in physics and life that if you empty an object of one thing it becomes filled with another.  If you empty a room of light, you fill it with darkness.  If you empty a glass of water, you fill it with air.  The converse is also true.  Therefore, when we banished God from the public square, we opened the door for the workers of darkness to fill those voids and chasms. 

John the Baptist said, “He must increase but I must decrease.”  The more I empty myself of hate the more room there is for love.  The more I empty myself of prejudice the more I can accept others for who they are.  The more I fill my heart with God the less room there is for evil.  Yes, I believe that the greatest need in America and the world today is Love.  That love can only come from a relationship with Jesus Christ. 

I hear those on all sides of the political and other hurl their hatred toward those in disagreement with them and justify it by calling the other side evil.  There is never a justification for the hate of other humans.  We may detest what they do but the person is a creation of God and one for whom Jesus died on the Cross.  I have found that it is impossible for me to hate the person I genuinely pray for.  I may not want to be in their company because of their language, attitude, or philosophy, but I will still love and pray for them.  God turned me around and if He can turn my life around, He can turn anyone around.

Just going to church and voting against things that are anathema to reason and moral sanity does not justify hating those who disagree.  We have plunged so deeply into the abyss of hatred and the attempted justification we are a divided nation and the end of that will be destruction. 

We cannot fix what is wrong in government or society through legislation or the efforts of a political party. We must, somehow and someway address the human heart.  In 2 Chronicles 7:14, we have the prescription for curing our national, personal, and societal ills.  It reads, “when My people, over whom My Name is called, humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their evil ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”  I am committed to doing that and I ask all who believe in God to join me.  We can see a change in America and the world.

God bless you and God bless America!

LIFE, LIBERTY, and THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS…


Our Founding Fathers were adamant that all people, all Americans, had certain inalienable and unalterable rights that came directly from our Creator, not the government.  In our Declaration of Independence, this was specified.  The words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” leave no question as to their recognition of certain rights and their unwillingness to accept less.  Why should we be any different today in America?

Those incredibly wise and detailed men continued saying, “…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  It is astounding to me that some in politics today believe that government has the right to trample, suspend, or modify those rights.  THEY DO NOT! 

The government has no right to tell any American citizen what they can think or even what they can say.  The only caveat is that if what we are saying is inciting riots and inducing sedition thereby endangering our Republic and our people the government can and should intervene.  Intervention is a difficult assertion because it can only mean keeping the public safe not developing a politically correct thought and speech police force.  If anyone becomes a threat to others, they are impeding that person’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

The government that our Founders established was intended to always be recognized as ‘by the consent of the governed’ not ‘vice versa’.  The government exists and operates, with the consent of the governed.  We are the ones charged with the oversight of the government, not the government charged with the oversight of us.  That is what the federal government has morphed into and poses a serious threat against our liberty and our designed system of government.

Politicians, of all stripes, seem to have developed or adopted the idea that they are our overseers and in the words of some, “the guardians of our democracy.”  The fallacy in that view is, in part, so few seem to understand that we are not a ‘direct democracy’ but a ‘republic’ with a representative government.  A second, fallacy in that line of thought is that the elected politicians seem to think that they are our lords and ladies.  They are not!  They are elected to represent us not rule us.

One of the roots of the development of this type of thinking is found in our modern educational system where Civics, Government, and History are taught incorrectly and inadequately if at all.  I have discussed our system of government with people holding Ph.D.’s in history. Some of them teach in our universities and do not understand our system of government.  Let me rephrase that and say, they may understand, but disagree with it and believe it antiquated.  Their disagreement leads them to become members of the Cancel Culture and Revisionist seeking to sanitize history to their liking.

Historic sanitization only results in the lesser informed being bereft of the benefit of the awareness and lessons in the failures and successes of our forefathers.  America like every other nation has made mistakes and has skeletons in our closet.  History should be taught as it is, not sanitized reinvented, or rewritten to fit a political or ideological narrative.  It is what it is and what it is should be our schoolmaster to help us avoid the mistakes and build upon the successes.

Our Founding Fathers offered the vision of a republic where all people were recognized as being created in the image of God and endowed with inalienable rights.  Every person has the God-given right, a right to be protected by our Constitution, to enjoy Life, Liberty, and the freedom to pursue happiness without government infringement.  That speaks of limited government, not the all-powerful nanny state that is being advanced in today’s political circles. 

Somehow, we have adopted the erroneous view that there must be a complete separation of ‘church and state.’  That view expanded requires a complete separation of moral moorings and moral absolutes from the political.  The desire to silence those who teach and preach the Gospel and the precepts and principles of the Bible relegating them to the confines of the four walls of the church is misguided.  That is not what transpired during our formative years and should not now.  The 19th-century Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev, in his work Politics, Law, and Morality wrote: “A complete separation of morality and politics constitutes one of the prevalent errors and evils of our century.”  That is still true today in the 21st-century.  It is a universal truth that is timeless.

The American nation was based on the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.  I use that archaic English term coined by clergyman Richard Hooker in The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1593).  Thomas Jefferson in his declaration, “in the Course of human Events, it [became] necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands [with an oppressive government] which have connected them [to each other] and assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle[d] them.”

Joseph Ellis explained in his book The Character of Thomas Jefferson, “Thomas Jefferson, linked American Independence to grand and great forces that transcended the immediate political crisis and swept the imagination upward toward a purer and more principled world.”  We need that today.  We need a return to our moral moorings and a recognition of God’s sovereignty and His bestowal of inalienable rights on mankind.

The right to Life is darkened and tainted in the pro-abortion view.  We claim that everyone has the Right to Life but when it comes to the unborn, their right to live is subordinated to the right of the mother to opt for ending that life.  The juridical parting point is how life is defined by pro-abortion advocates and justices.  The term life is semantically poor.  The Romans did little but Latinize various Greek terms for life. 

Bios: life, in as much as a being, is born and dies in its precariousness and morality. Zoe: eternal life, which has no beginning and no end.  It is a dimension of life that is different from bios, such as divine life.  Psyche: life in motion or movement and is more than bios because it brings things like character into the mix.  Soma: a dimension of life that is inseparable from bios, but which is not reducible to the soma; it can be translated as a body.  Words have meaning. Life is the ability to Live and pursue that which makes us complete in every dimension.  That is God-given Right!

Liberty is more than not being in chains it is the freedom to think, express, develop ideas, dreams, and plans for the pursuit of Life.  Liberty includes freedom from overt and covert governmental infringement upon our ability to live the life that God has granted us.  God gave us liberty and through His Truth, we are liberated.  It is through educational and historic ignorance that our chains are forged, and we are imprisoned by the tyrannical.  It is expressed in censorship and deprogramming of anyone not agreeing with the mandated ideological philosophy.  That strips citizens of the Freedom of Speech and Opinion.  It seeks to make us mindless followers rather than innovators and initiators.

It is stated possibly erroneously that Jefferson changed the third term of John Locke’s trinity “life, liberty, and property” with “the pursuit of happiness.”  That phrase may have been an importation, not an origination by Jefferson.  Our Founding Fathers believed that “pursuing happiness was the foundation of liberty.”  Our founders adamantly sought to protect private property from government infringement. 

Our Founders believed that God has given to every person the right, the undeniable and inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.  Unless we return to those founding principles, we will watch our republic become a memory and our liberties become controlled and restricted by the government. I continue to trust God, not the Government.

God bless you and God bless America!