Right now our local freedom group is hosting a class on the Constitution and its origins. It explores the beliefs of the founding fathers and the thinking behind The Constitution. It discusses that the unraveling of our freedom is imminent if this document is not upheld. And the ways in which that is possible
We have strayed far from the intent of our nations first leaders. Why? How?
“When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.” Proverbs 29:2
God teaches discipline and morality. The ten commandments are the basis for American law. Our founding fathers wrote the Constitution based on The Bible. They were Christians who recognized that men were sinful by nature. And that government was necessary to keep men within the confines of God’s law.
But they also knew that men in government were prone to a sinful nature as well, and therefore government needed checks and balances to ensure that evil men could not reign supreme or assume too much power.
Often times Romans 13 is incorrectly interpreted to “we must obey all government authority as all government authority is ordained by God.” But that interpretation is short-sighted.
There are three exceptions as pointed out by Pastor Coates, arrested in Canada earlier this year, after articulating these points. Where are we in a culture when Pastor’s begin to be arrested? He points out men can disobey when;
“Government commands what God forbids.” ie. denounce God and hail other
“God commands what government forbids.” ie. close churches and cease community worship
“Government commands what isn’t theirs to command.” ie. steps out of their lane and into the lane of our unalienable rights. Which they are tasked with upholding. And if they infringe upon them it is the duty of the governed to right them, or the governed are “slavish and absurd.”
To keep government moderate, they recommended separating government into three branches: legislative, executive, judicial.
This too was based on the bible.
“For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us.” Isaiah 33:22
Yet on June 17, 1963 the Supreme Court ruled that Bible reading or prayer in public schools was unconstitutional.
The purpose as outlined by our founding fathers, of the courts, was not to make law. That is the duty of the legislative branch ONLY. The court was merely to discover and apply law.
We are taught in school that the branches are equal. Or we believe the executive has the most power. The job of the executive is to execute the laws the legislative branch have enacted. In a way, the executive works for them. Not the other way around. Executive orders are not law. They are merely orders only applying to those who work for the executive. Not the public as a whole. And the court wasn’t instituted to overrule the other two. The job of the courts is not to make law, but to apply it.
The judges must not have spent a lot of time with our nation’s charter or with God, or they would’ve seen their ruling was profoundly incorrect.
Every one of the State’s Constitutions mentions God or the divine, and nearly 200 times overall.
The separation of Church and State ruling in 1947 was also misguided. Our founding fathers sourced the concept of law on The Bible, Classical thinkers like Cicero, international law thinkers like Grotious, Pufendorf and Vattel and Contemporary Law thinkers like Blackstone, Locke, Montesquieu.
The Church and its guiding doctrine, the Bible, was not to be separated from Government. It was the guiding principles in which it was based and must follow.
The separation of church and state is the other way around. The church is a sovereign entity. And the authority they follow is that of God’s. As the authority of man, and therefore government, can be misguided. As discussed above and below.
Godly principles were never intended only to remain in the confines of Church one day a week. But intended to be present and forefront in our daily lives.
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, “Religion and Morality are indispensable supports.” George Washington (Farewell Address, 1776)
There were three categories of Law considered in the drafting of our Nation’s charter.
Revealed law, “the doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the Holy Scriptures.”
Law of Nature, “when He Created man, and endued him with free will to conduct himself in all parts of life, He laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that free will is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty of reason to discover the purport of those laws.”
Municipal law, that which is adopted by civil government and must conform to the higher law of God: “Upon these two foundations the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws: That is to say, no human law should be suffered to contradict these.”
If you want to truly understand our founding fathers intentions read about self-evident truth. They believed that it was the duty of the governed to abolish a government which has engaged in a long train of abuses and usurpations, as they deemed England had, and as I would argue our government has today. Read the list of abuses and usurpations England was accused of, and ponder how many of those are happening right now.
The founding fathers knew that there exists a higher law than the law of man, by which man’s law must be judged. Natural law is predicated upon the existence of objective truth. And much of our objective truth is being turned on its head with denial of basic laws of nature such as biology.
As celebrities identifying as “they” “them” obscuring objective truth and making it subjective. Orwell warned of subjective truth in “1984.” 2+2=5 A society without objective truth is easy to control.
Natural law limited government authority. Our founding fathers intention was not for big authoritative government from which they escaped. But for decentralized, limited government, based on God’s teachings and instituted by Godly men.
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external or internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” James Madison, Federalist Papers #51
They feared government power. They knew that people need order, but rulers need limits.
“Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton
For that reason, our founding fathers sought to limit government power.
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” John Adams
They founded our nation as a Republic. A Republic where the most Godly, principled men would be elected to represent the rest. Men were to be elected who could uphold the highest standard. To be a moral and religious people. Or they would fail in their duty of upholding the Constitution.
How could one uphold principles they fundamentally disagree with? And can’t wholeheartedly defend. Representatives needed to be men who would risk it all to do what was moral. What was right. And it was the peoples job to ensure the representatives they selected were of the caliber that would do this. Men who would stand for righteousness even if it meant standing alone.
So is it any surprise that as we wrote God out of our schools, our workplaces, our government that we moved away from the freedom our forefathers intended to protect?
God created human beings to be free. The Declaration of Independence states that people “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The search for freedom is found throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Humanity gave up its freedom by choosing to rebel against God. From that time forward, the perfect freedom God created in the Garden of Eden was gone, and the long-term effects were both physical and spiritual.
The Old Testament records how God’s people lost their physical freedom time and again as various empires overtook them (most notably the Egyptians, as recorded in the book of Exodus).
Today, many people are living in spiritual slavery without realizing it. They chase false gods of money, success, personal comfort and love—only to realize they still have an emptiness that can’t be filled by any of those things. And that spiritual slavery is once again leading back to physical bondage.
The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been 200 years. America has been in existence for nearly 250. Most nations have professed through the following sequence:
from bondage to spiritual faith
from spiritual faith to great courage
from courage to liberty
from liberty to abundance
from abundance to selfishness
from selfishness to complacency
from complacency to apathy
from apathy to dependency
from dependency back to bondage
Where would you say we are now in this nation?
If we look to recent history we can see what happens when men write out God. They write in chains.
In the USSRs anti-religious campaign, government knew that the educated religious could not be convinced. So they went after the uneducated religious, and if they denounced God and hailed the USSR they could live. The cost of the denouncement was a loss of freedom.
In Germany, men were asked to denounce God and hail a false idol. A man. Schools stopped teaching religion. And instead taught national socialism. Nazism.
Christians who saw the dangers put their children in Christian schools. Much like a lot of us are doing today. Opting to homeschool or put our children in christian schools. Away from Godless secular teaching that has been infiltrating our schools for decades.
Dewey of the Dewey decimal system was a known atheist looking to write out God and write in secular teachings.
And now we have the introduction of CRT, masked as teaching of equality against racism. But instead teaching our children to believe they are either oppressed or the oppressor. Critical Race Theory derives from 1930s Marxist Critical theory. Rebranded Marxism. Offering a utopia that leads to communism. But never to equality. Instead of redistribution of wealth between social classes like earlier Marxism. CRT calls for equity between races.
But it writes out hard work as the great equalizer. You will be given something even when it hasn’t been earned. That philosophy always fails as the takers outweigh the givers. And the givers become fatigued with providing for the rest. Until eventually, you have shortages and breadlines. Just ask Cuba, Venezuela and other failed attempts.
Our founding fathers work ethic enabled freedom. Recognizing the necessity for individualism. And the failings of collectivism.
We have been slowly losing our country, our freedom, because we were complacent. We allowed God to be written out of our government, our schools, our lives.
We allowed the values of other cultures to creep in. Losing the values that allowed for the American Dream. And a country that has been the beacon of freedom for the world. To the point that even our symbols of freedom have been bastardized.
What symbols do other countries wave while seeking freedom from communism and totalitarianism? Our flag.
We’ve allowed every value which made us unique. Which made us free. To be dismantled. Discredited. And for that we are losing our country.
For decades we gained freedoms. And now we are trading them for a promise that has failed the world over. While not recognizing what we had, was what the rest of the world sought.
“Freedom is a fragile thing and it's never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. And those in world history who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.” Ronald Reagan
We are at a precipice. We have a choice to make. While we still have choices that government does not make for us.
As we walked away from God, we walked towards chains. And those who never knew God welcomed us to their prison. Instituted by men who knew not the principles of the founding fathers. Yet seek to destroy them so they can yield unbridled and absolute power.
Writing their nonessential businesses waivers. Going to posh restaurants while the rest of us are told not to have Thanksgiving with our families. Not wearing masks, when we are told we must. Berating us for ever wanting freedom. Selfish freedom. Selfish freedom.
So much for “give me liberty, or give me death.”
Those who would trade liberty for a little bit of safety, and Benjamin Franklin warned us of the dangers of such a trade. Yet so many eagerly have made it. For they knew not the principles which our founding fathers built our great nation. So they were ineffective at preserving them.
In seeing our nation and our freedom slip through our fingers. Many of us have sought out this knowledge. And now we share it hoping it is not too late.
Moving forward we must restore our country by restoring the values that made us America.
Any other religion would not have made the laws which upheld freedom.
Gandhi for instance was a pacifists to an extreme. Gandhi believed women should submit to rape and Jews should submit to Hitler. Islam wouldn’t have offered the same freedoms.
If we want to save our country first we must bring God and biblical principles, the principles in which American law is founded, back into the American legislature. Back into American government. Back into American schools. We must honor our emblem of freedom which many have died to uphold.
Land of the free, home of the brave. Is only true so long as we make it true.
And we must elect representatives which we know will stand for what is right even if they are standing alone. We must hold them to a higher standard. And not take our eyes off of them. We must seek smaller government. And return the courts and executives back to their original duties. We must ensure that those who hold an oath to our countries charter can not only articulate our nations principles. But fiercely defend them. And we must do it now, before it is too late
Will you stand for freedom?
Danielle Goodrich
referencing teachings of
Jeff Cobble and John Eidsmoe