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Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI210511B
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00:06 Welcome back to the Liberty Insider.
00:08 Before the break, 00:10 I was trying to set the scene from John, 00:15 the Gospel of John, where a ruler in Israel, 00:18 Nicodemus came by night that says to talk with Jesus. 00:24 Of course, by then Jesus 00:27 was making a big fuss in the land. 00:30 People were following Him, crowds of people were told 00:33 not just His 12 disciples, not just the women, 00:37 if you read the gospels, clearly, 00:38 there are a large number of women 00:40 that traveled with them often 00:42 as well as bringing them food and sustenance. 00:46 Like one of the followers, women followers of Jesus 00:49 was the wife of Herod's steward. 00:53 If you read these books carefully, 00:54 you find an inter relationship that's quite amazing. 00:58 When Jesus, during his passion was taken before Herod, 01:03 remember Herod had heard about him, 01:04 it says, and so he asked Him to do a miracle. 01:07 Well, he certainly would have heard about 01:09 Jesus through his steward, 01:11 his top official in the household. 01:14 And then there was not just the 70 that Jesus sent out 01:18 throughout the towns 01:19 and villages of that whole area. 01:21 There was, Jesus was a phenomenon, 01:24 it's quite obvious. 01:26 And here this ruler in Israel came singly, 01:29 it seems, at night to talk to Jesus. 01:33 And earlier I said, I let him off the hook a bit, 01:35 I don't think he was afraid to see Jesus. 01:39 If he had any fear, 01:40 it might have been that his fellow, 01:43 fellows on the ruling council might have sneered at him. 01:47 But he just came in a natural time 01:49 after the business of the day, 01:51 when people typically to this day 01:53 in that part of the world, sit around and talk and, 01:57 you know, have refreshments 02:00 and enjoy the cool which they couldn't 02:01 during the non-air conditioned environment before. 02:05 And so Nicodemus came and asked, and Jesus said, 02:08 you must be born again. 02:11 And it's troubled me greatly that in the United States 02:14 where there's a lot of talk of religion, 02:15 which is a sign of a great heritage, 02:19 because religious liberty is part of the history 02:22 and indeed even the mythology 02:24 of the founding of the United States. 02:26 A country that is secular, 02:29 the government is calculatedly secular, 02:32 but the history of the United States 02:34 before the country was even formed 02:36 before the War of Independence, 02:40 there were indeed a number of Puritan settlements 02:44 that were done for an overtly religious reason. 02:48 Even in that era, there were a number of people 02:51 escaping persecution 02:53 from the wars of religion in Europe. 02:55 And after the United States was founded even, 02:57 a number of refugee groups 03:00 came from some overtly religious reasons. 03:03 I live in Maryland. 03:05 And I'm right near the Pennsylvania border. 03:08 And I can tell you, there's a lot of Amish 03:11 and Mennonite people up in that area. 03:14 And, of course, the Anabaptists and they fled persecution. 03:17 So that part of the narrative is true, 03:20 even though we're a secular government. 03:23 But that said, the religious nature 03:26 of the United States has changed radically. 03:29 And the efforts now to gain 03:33 what is seen as religious liberty 03:35 often are a privilege state 03:40 for a certain particular religious viewpoint, 03:43 not necessarily a broad waterfront of rights 03:46 for people of faith to exist in the secular community. 03:51 And what I think is missing, I've analyzed this 03:54 and looked at it many 03:56 which ways and I've come to believe that 03:59 what is usually missing is the spirituality 04:02 that gives charity and, you know, 04:08 deep religious tint to religious activities, 04:12 without that it's just an organization. 04:14 It's just a pressure group. 04:16 It's just a special interest group. 04:19 And I've listened to the religious right. 04:22 And they don't talk much about the new birth, 04:26 a total sea change in thinking that 04:28 brings a spiritual "otherworldliness." 04:32 It's not that you're removed from this world, 04:34 but you're, as the Bible says your things 04:36 are set up, your mind is set upon 04:38 the things that are above. 04:40 When that is the case, 04:43 I believe religious liberty 04:44 is advanced a little differently 04:46 than the often overtly political way that 04:49 we're seeing today and not talk about that. 04:54 Instead, what is characterized 04:56 a lot of the religious expression 04:58 in the political and public sense 05:01 has been talked about Dominionism. 05:04 The power, the control that was given to God's faithful, 05:10 they say, starting with the Garden of Eden 05:14 when dominion over the creatures 05:17 was given to Adam and Eve. 05:19 I read into that form of Dominion really custody, 05:23 and the obligation to care for things, 05:26 but Dominionism as it's written in our era, 05:30 is really people of a Christian or religious profession, 05:33 having the right to mind to the heart's content, 05:37 to deny environmental change, 05:40 and say that, you know, 05:42 it's not happening first of all, 05:43 but you know, we'll do whatever we want to. 05:47 I really don't see Dominionism able to be 05:51 expressed anywhere near the way it is now, 05:53 if the emphasis was on spirituality 05:56 and the new birth, 05:57 and I believe that's what's missing. 06:01 Over the recent years, 06:03 I've often reached back into history 06:05 for some of my examples. 06:07 And as a six or seven year old, 06:11 I was very enamored 06:12 with John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. 06:15 And I think even on this program, 06:17 I've told about attending the summer 10th session 06:20 as a child where 06:22 they were serializing that story. 06:25 Exciting, but I've been taken 06:27 recently to not just read Pilgrim's Progress, 06:30 but to go and read John Bunyan's own testimony. 06:33 And he tells there, how he was a foul mouthed. 06:37 He was a Christian, 06:38 in a general sense enough to be afraid of the judgment. 06:42 But he fought in the Civil War on the parliamentary side, 06:45 but alongside the Puritans. 06:49 But he had no real religion at that point. 06:51 He was foul mouthed, gambler, cheater, and all the rest. 06:56 But slowly he saw the attraction in people 06:59 that knew God that had a heavenly sensibility. 07:02 And he said, he, even though 07:04 he thought he knew the Bible, 07:06 he didn't understand its root emphasis. 07:12 He didn't understand the deeper spiritual meaning 07:14 until he met some poor, simple Christian women, 07:19 talking about the grace of God 07:21 and what He had done in their lives. 07:23 And then John Bunyan said, by this, he says, 07:26 my mind was so fixed on spiritual things 07:30 that it was like a horse leech at the vein, 07:34 you know, a big horse leech 07:37 sucking the blood out of the vein. 07:39 And he says, and crying more, more, more. 07:44 You know, that's what the Bible is calling us all toward, 07:47 a spiritual hunger that can be only fulfilled 07:52 when you have the sensibility that appreciates it. 07:55 Without that religion is a pernicious force. 07:59 And this is the greatest irony of our age, 08:02 and age, very much like 08:04 what the Old Testament talks about 08:06 in the time of the judges, 08:08 when the Word of God was rare in those days, 08:12 as it says, the prophets were not obvious. 08:15 The theocracy is long since gone. 08:18 And it says every man did what was right in his own eyes. 08:23 When you have the new birth, 08:24 you don't do what's right in your own eyes. 08:27 You do what is natural, to someone that's hungering 08:32 and searching after righteousness, 08:34 to use the Bible term. 08:37 That's what's needed in the US today. 08:39 And as we head into great stresses, 08:43 COVID just one of them, 08:45 economic collapse or an economic... 08:48 Collapse is a strong word, but an economic wakeup times 08:52 certain to come in the very near future, 08:55 probably more extreme than 2008. 08:59 As we head into a continued round of natural disasters, 09:05 that seemed to be just increasing in severity 09:08 and frequency, 09:09 and they're draining the treasury, 09:11 something extraordinary will have to be done 09:15 to keep our society together. 09:17 And something extraordinary needs to be done 09:20 to defend religious and other civil liberties in a time 09:24 when it would seem that all these must be 09:25 thrown out for survival sake. 09:31 In this era, we are lost on religious liberty 09:35 unless we see it in the context 09:39 of the changed heart and mind 09:45 that comes from a spiritual, new love experience. 09:50 Else it's just a mechanical thing that 09:53 the courts can look at and, 09:55 you know, nod toward and pass it off. 09:58 It also could easily be 09:59 what often happens in the workplace, 10:00 someone wants the Sabbath accommodation. 10:03 And under the present system, it's just as likely, 10:07 since the employer has the whip hand on this, 10:09 yes, I'll give you this weekend off, 10:12 but I can't give you next weekend. 10:13 That's not religious accommodation. 10:16 And if your heart is overflowing 10:18 with love for God, 10:19 you don't serve Him by halves, 10:21 you serve Him with your whole heart and your mind. 10:26 And the trick is how to do that 10:28 in an increasingly secular society, 10:31 a society that is forgetting its norms, 10:34 and the society just like Nicodemus, 10:36 that needs to be reminded that you must be born again. 10:45 Western history and Christianity 10:47 took quite a turn, 10:50 when would be emperor Constantine said that 10:54 he saw a vision in the sky of a cross, 10:57 and a voice that said, by the sign you will conquer. 11:00 You know, that's the stuff of legend. 11:02 But in the record of history, 11:04 it led Christianity in quite a dark alley, 11:08 compulsion, state religion and so on. 11:11 But what was missing from that, in my view, was any evidence 11:15 that Constantine had a heart change. 11:18 What we need today and what's always needed. 11:22 As one writer that I read, speaking about Christ, 11:25 the Christ we forget, he said, 11:26 we need once more that living Christ, 11:29 not a crucifix, not as an image, 11:31 but as a living dynamic presence in our heart. 11:35 With that present, 11:36 any discussion of religious liberty 11:38 takes its rightful place in the rights 11:41 and privileges of the modern era. 11:44 Without it, it's dead. 11:46 For Liberty Insider, this is Lincoln Steed. |
Revised 2021-11-04