Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break,
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I had introduced
the last editorial
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I'd written for Liberty Magazine
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and even given
you a little of it,
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so I won't repeat all of it,
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but I want to share parts of it.
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I included that
story of Bulgaria,
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which you know
already, so I'll skip over that.
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But this is what I
wrote, called A Small Gap.
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A little more than 22 years
ago I sat down in a new office,
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at a new desk, and
pondered what to do next.
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On the desktop
were just a few items
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that tied me to
this new reality.
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There was a cake-top decoration
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in the style of
the Statue of Liberty,
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left over from the
farewell with editorial staff
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at the late Review
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and Herald
Publishing Association
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in Hagerstown, Maryland,
where I live by the way.
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In a card that came with
it, an editor friend had noted
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my possible risk
in defending religious
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liberty in a volatile world:
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the thought
perplexed me at the time,
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and did not make much
sense till years later,
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walking alone through
the religious-riot-ravaged
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streets of
Ambon City, Indonesia,
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it hit me that there
was indeed mortal danger.
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In an incongruously
small box on that desk
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was also a
little pile of articles,
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some yellowed and marked
as accepted decades earlier:
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my "slush" file this was
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or otherwise known as the
makings of my first issue.
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And then I went back
and spoke about Bulgaria
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and other travels
and ended with this.
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Almost a lifetime back now,
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we crossed much
of India by train.
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I will never forget looking
out on the fields one morning,
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as the train
chugged its way across
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the countryside,
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and seeing outside the window,
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almost shoulder
to shoulder humans
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in morning
ablutions, dotting the plain
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from trackside to
horizon it seemed.
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It was disorienting
to my sense of humanity.
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Jesus Christ I read
in the Bible was said
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to have looked on the
crowds and had pity on them.
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Far easier to
depersonalize one's concern and
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transmigrate religious
liberty to legislative action,
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court cases, and
efforts to protect
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religious organizations.
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I know that we have to
fight our own sensibilities
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in standing up for
the conscience rights
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of all mankind.
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How easy it is in matters
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of religious liberty
to slip into thinking
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that such things do
not apply to Untermensch,
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to use the word
with deep meaning,
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only to we who understand
all of its complexities!
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As though we ever could!
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Back in my Australian homeland,
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with my
foreign-born wife, Rosa Delia,
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whom I had met
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while living and
studying in the United States,
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those visions and insights
seemed dreamlike and distant.
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After all, in a
nearly empty lucky country,
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two-hour drive into the
country might reveal only
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dusty-road-edge-
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-to-distant-ridge
congregations of kangaroos
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and wombats:
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existential emptiness
and easy forgetfulness.
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Then in the early
hours of the morning,
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there was that call to
return to the United States
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for editing responsibilities.
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"Don't go," cautioned my
wife, echoing the view of many
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down south, deep
south by the way,
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that the United States
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is the eye of a
hurricane best avoided.
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And I was
conflicted, to be sure.
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"But this is so
unexpected," I said to my wife,
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"and the signs of
God's leading so clear
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that I must go."
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It may be that I am just
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a small
connection in a big plan:
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a single contact I
make may complete the chain.
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And so we returned.
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And a few years later I sat
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at that new
Liberty editorial desk!
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For most of my formative years
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Roland Hegstad was the
editor of Liberty magazine,
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34 years in total for him out of
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about 120 some
years for the magazine.
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So for me he will
always be Mr. Liberty.
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But, of course, when I
think further about it,
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Liberty magazine
belongs to none of us,
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editor or reader.
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Religious liberty
is as big as humanity
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and everyman's
stirrings of conscience.
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It is surely the idA(C)e fixe
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at the center of a
gospel proclamation.
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For years
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I have tried to
remind Christian audiences
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that fallen
mankind has been released
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from millennia
of captivity to sin
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by the actions of a Redeemer.
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We are free, we have freedom,
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no one can take that from us.
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The Bible says in
the words of Jesus,
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"I have set
before you an open door
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that no man can shut."
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That's how the Bible puts it.
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And during the time with Liberty
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I have seen the
religious world warp
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and narrow religious freedom
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into an
entitlement to restrict others.
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And during that time
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I have seen a narrowing
of even the secular concept
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of liberty.
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After the towers down of 2001,
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an article in Le
Monde magazine in France
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commented on the
realism of the moment.
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More than real,
it said: symbolic!
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As I remember, the
author wrote that quote,
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"We have reached the point
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where the very idea of freedom,
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itself
relatively recent and new,
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is in the process of being
replaced by its polar opposite,
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that of a terror of security."
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And so, enhanced interrogations,
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unitary visions
of executive power,
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impromptu prayer
sessions by insurgents
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in the House chamber, a voice,
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a choice rather of isolation
over worship during a pandemic.
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What next?
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God only knows,
try reading Revelation.
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So where is my
place within all of this?
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This editorial is
from my last issue
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of Liberty magazine as editor,
last as editor before retiring.
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I daren't apply to
myself General MacArthur's
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self-pitying
epilogue after being fired
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for wanting to drop
the atomic bomb in China.
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"Old soldiers don't die,
he said, they just fade away."
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Of course we fade away,
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like the grass,
according to the Bible,
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but our actions can endure.
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Instead, I'd like to invoke
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a Russian folk
song of wartime loss.
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I always find a deep
sadness and melancholy
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in Russian song and literature.
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As a young man of
the Vietnam War era,
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I was deeply affected by reading
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Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.
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The song I'm quoting
from is called Cranes:
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I loved it best sung
by the late baritone,
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Russian baritone
Dmitri Hvorostovsky.
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The lines of that song
that I think admit me now
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are these:
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"Flying in the fog
at the end of the day,
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and in those ranks
there is a small gap:
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Maybe this is the place for me."
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You know, I don't
think it's just because
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I'm a Seventh-day Adventist
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Bible believing
prophecy inclined Christian.
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I think it's
staring us in the face.
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As the Bible itself says that
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the world is
waxing old like a garment.
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I think it's clear that
things are winding down.
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The old controversies
are reaching fever pitch.
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The old
certainties are crumbling,
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certainly in the United
States, democratic norms
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are not so sacrosanct anymore.
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We are facing a moment of truth.
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Each of us needs to decide
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how we're going
to comport ourselves
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in what is being
called the last great crisis.
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Will we argue not
just for civil liberties
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in the West, we think
that that's what we're about.
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But will we argue
for religious liberties
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for our rights before God,
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for our rights to
explain God to our fellows?
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Will we maintain our integrity,
no matter what happens?
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Remember, Lucifer in
heaven about Job says,
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one of his
friends actually said,
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"Will you still
maintain your integrity?
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"Of course,
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we need to be
faithful to the end
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to that last stroke of
the pen, the end of the game.
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Retirement can mean
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different things
to different people.
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And in my threatening
to my wife, at least,
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I've suggested
that I might spend
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more time
listening to compact discs.
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I have 5,000 of them,
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disorganizedly
stored in the basement.
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So I started
listening to them the other day,
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practicing for
soon to begin retirement
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and fell upon
Frank Sinatra singing
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songs of
yesteryear and the waning year
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and September song
and the one that got me
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was Yesterday when I was young.
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And in reality no
matter what age we are,
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yesterday is when we were young.
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As the Bible says 1,000
years is a day with the Lord.
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Time is fleeting for all of us.
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We just don't notice it,
till we're a little older.
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What we need to do is look ahead
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to the eternity of
bliss promise for all of us
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if we're
faithful, if we're true,
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if we catch the
imagination of being one
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with the Creator of all things,
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Jesus Christ.
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For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
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