Happy Independence Day!
I hope you and your family are enjoying extra time together and are reflecting on what this holiday is intended to commemorate.
As you’re headed to your different festivities today, I hope you’ll have an opportunity to catch our program with pastor Andy Stanley. We’ll be airing a recorded message he delivered to his congregation at North Point Community Church in Georgia where he serves as senior pastor.
I think it’s a timely message that gets to the heart of why our country is losing its way on so many fronts, and how we can find the right path back.
Pastor Stanley fleshes out an idea I mentioned in my previous blog, that American citizens can’t effectively govern themselves – as our Founders intended – unless they are a virtuous people.
Our second president, John Adams, said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Without virtue, liberty will devour liberty. Eventually, my rights will compete with your rights. Apart from the eternal truth of God, who’s to say who’s correct when our rights compete with one another?
The courts.
But virtue doesn’t come from law. Our laws were meant to protect and guide us, not to govern us. The law doesn’t inspire greatness, and the law can’t inspire or create virtue. It can only answer the questions, how low can you go? How much can you can get away with? How far can you push the boundary?
Freedom will eventually collapse if people are given individual rights with no accountability. The term for it is anarchy.
Liberty without responsibility undermines liberty.
I hope you’ll tune in for Pastor Stanley’s message. He’ll explain why true Christian behavior offers the most potential for our nation to lift itself out of its moral freefall.
Hear the broadcast on your local radio station. Or tune in anytime online or via our free, downloadable mobile phone app.
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