Many Americans have spent this week pondering the meaning of freedom as the United States celebrates Independence Day on July 4.  We celebrate the end of the Revolutionary War and independence from Great Britain, founding a nation with individual freedom at its very core.  Christian citizens also ponder the role that freedom of religion played in the establishment of our nation and how it continues to influence national policies and practices. 

As I watched the news this week and thought about the upcoming 4th of July, my musings kept changing with each new story.  The soldiers currently fighting overseas are, as always, at the forefront of any freedom celebration.  I thought about them being away from their loved ones and not knowing if they will come home alive, but risking everything to make the American notion of freedom a concept available to all peoples.  America's soldiers know better than the rest of us the full price that has been paid for the liberties we enjoy.

Then, miraculously, three American hostages were rescued from FARC imprisonment in Columbia.  I watched CNN Wednesday night, seeing the aircraft landing and bringing those three men back to US soil for the first time in over five years.  It brought tears to my eyes to see the helicopters take off, transporting them to a hospital to undergo medical checkups after their long jungle ordeal.  I felt an overwhelming pride in our servicemen at that moment for carrying out an impeccable operation of liberation without shedding a drop of blood.  I cannot begin to imagine what Independence Day will mean to those men and their families.  The public does not know all the details of what their years as hostages have been like, but we can well imagine it was not a luxury vacation. 

Then Thursday morning brought a different, sadder picture of freedom.  An old acquaintence took his own life Wednesday night, probably about the time I was cheering the rescue of the hostages.  He was a captive of a different sort, and the only freedom he could find was in death.  I remembered that, for all our celebrations of individual liberties and our work to help others gain those freedoms, many people only find them in death.  Whether through atrocities such as the Jews experienced during World War II, or through their own actions to escape inner demons, liberty for some is only gained when life itself is lost. 

Later in the day, I saw the news story of the teenagers who videotaped themselves abusing an eight-month-old baby and then put it on YouTube so everyone could watch it and see them laughing.  My first knee-jerk reaction was that if it were my son doing that, the cops had better put him in prison to keep me from killing him.  It was almost unbearable to watch on television; I can only imagine the rage the baby's parents must be feeling.  And so we come to yet another aspect of freedom: the removal of certain freedoms from individuals by society to protect the general public in their daily exercise of liberty. 

In the United States, one person's freedom ends where the next person's begins, and when those bounderies are crossed freedoms may be removed.  The ricidivism rate in America, though, tells me that for some unknown reason freedom is not as precious to some as it is to others.  Is it a blatant disregard for liberty?  A failure to understand liberty?  Would those repeat offenders continue doing so if they were involved in the judicial system of, say, North Korea, where "free" is a four-letter word?  With freedom comes responsibility and the requirement of recognizing that freedom as being open to everyone.

At the end of this seemingly disjointed ponderance of freedom, there lies one overarching truth.  True freedom in all its forms is found in God.  He paid the highest price of all when Jesus died on the cross to free us from our sins.  We have only to look to Noah, Moses, Paul and others to see that God has planned and flawlessly executed hostage rescue missions throughout history.  He sent a man's literal inner demons into a swine herd.  He removed the freedom of Heaven from Lucifer when the angel crossed the line.  Our Lord gave us the greatest gift in granting us free will.  We have the freedom to choose, but also the responsibility to choose the Truth and to take that Truth to all corners of the earth. 

America's Independence Day is a celebration of freedom, although precarious and at times elusive.  Our true Independence Day will be that moment when we leave this earthly home for the home our Father has prepared for us.  Only then will we know God's freedom as He intended it to be. 

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