No Freedom Without Virtue

FORGET NONE OF HIS BENEFITS
volume 20, number 45, November 11, 2021

“For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” -Galatians 5:13

When our federal and state governments mandated limits on public assemblies during the pandemic, including forbidding churches to gather with more than ten or so people, why did most of us go along with mandates? When our president is now mandating the COVID-19 vaccine, why are most companies submitting to it, and firing people who refuse to take the jab? I have shown you over the last two postings that our forefathers fought against tyranny and the root of their fight was the Bible and the theology of men like John Calvin, John Knox, Samuel Rutherford, and Algernon Sydney. Our forefathers were very different from us. They resisted tyranny and we are acquiescing to it. Why, what’s the problem? 

John Adams in 1776 wrote, “The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure virtue.” He said that unless this new nation pursued virtue then, “They may change their rulers and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty. They will only exchange tyrants and tyrannies.” In his tour of the United States in 1831 French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the greatness of the American experiment was built on faith and virtue. Here is a summation of Tocqueville’s findings:

“Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”[1]

It goes without saying that we have never been a perfectly righteous nation, even in our beginning. Our reprehensible treatment of the American Indians was horrible (my wife’s great, great, great grandmother was a Cherokee Indian who traveled from North Georgia on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma).[2] It is a dreadful blight on our nation, totally inexcusable. And of course our practice of slavery mocks the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. In spite of these two very bad epochs in our history, we should still be able to say that there was a great degree of virtue. 

Self-government cannot exist unless people have genuine freedom to do what they ought to do, but that freedom cannot exist without virtue, and virtue cannot exist without faith. Our constitution was predicated on the assumption that we were, and must remain virtuous. 

Consider this illustration. Let’s say you have teen-age sons and they are obedient, seeking the Lord with a desire to live holy and godly lives. If so, then you will find it unnecessary to put many restrictions of them. You will not need to watch their every move, monitor their screen time, or what they are watching, who their friends are, etc. If however, you discover they are disobedient, hanging out with unsavory characters, watching porn, and drinking beer or smoking marijuana, then everything has changed. You must crack down on them. They were living under grace, so to speak, but they now have forfeited their freedom and must live under law. You will find it necessary to put more restrictions on them to protect them from themselves. 

Likewise, the growing number of laws in our country restrict our freedoms and these restrictions are because we are a lawless nation. So the civil magistrate must protect the ordinary citizen from evildoers.      

So, what made us a virtuous nation in the beginning? 

It happened through a most unlikely person, an Englishman, George Whitefield (1714 to 1770). Whitefield was a born orator, with a magnificent voice. The famous British actor, David Garrick, said that he would give much money if he could simply say, “Oh” or “Mesopotamia” like Whitefield. Benjamin Franklin, who became a close friend of Whitefield and who published his sermons in the Pennsylvania Gazette, heard that Whitefield had supposedly preached to crowds of thirty thousand in the open air in England, and Franklin was quite skeptical of that possibility. So one day while Whitefield was preaching on the court house steps at Market Street in downtown Philadelphia, Franklin went back several blocks and found that he could hear him clearly. Franklin then imagined a semi-circle from that point back to Whitefield and allowed two square feet for each person and determined that he could in fact speak to thirty thousand people at one time. 

Whitefield’s preaching had a tremendous impact in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, but the greatest societal impact was upon Colonial America. Some historians have estimated that at least ten percent of the American population at the time (3 million people) were converted through Whitefield’s preaching. Our nation was transformed by it. We also believe that as much as ninety percent of America at the time actually heard him preach.

His message, “You must be born again,” leveled the playing field for everyone—rich or poor, white or black, slave or free. Churchgoers were born again, as were prostitutes, drunkards, con-artists, wife beaters, and all manner of people. And perhaps most importantly for the establishment of the American experiment of a republic and the concept of self-government, was that his ministry united the people in the thirteen colonies. Instead of seeing themselves primarily as from Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, or Georgia, the people began to see themselves as Americans. They were one, and they were more moral and more virtuous because they had been born again and received the very life of God in their souls. 

Perhaps there is a young man out there somewhere, perhaps there is a little boy just learning to walk, or perhaps there is a boy who is yet to be born, whom God may raise up again to startle our nation with true, heavenly sent revival preaching which will transform our nation. I pray God will do so, for without this, I honestly see no hope at all for our nation. We are squandering the great freedoms which were purchased with the blood of those who died at Lexington and Concord, of those who died at Gettysburg, of those who died at Cantigny, of those who died at Omaha Beach, and of those who shed their blood in subsequent wars, and in many cases, forfeited their own souls (because they died without Christ and went to hell) to secure our freedom. 
I must confess I feel like pulling my hair out at what I am seeing take place in this nation. Our young people seem generally to have no clue at what is happening. We must pray, my friends. Faith, virtue, and freedom are not perpetual. We dare not presume they are.  
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1. These quotes are all cited by Eric Metaxas in his book If You Can Keep It, pages 53-59.
2. From 1830 to 1850 125,000 Native Americans were forcibly driven from the ancestral homes in North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia,, Florida, and Alabama by Federal troops and made to settle primarily in Oklahoma. The major motivation for doing so in Georgia was for the white man to get the gold discovered on Indian land.