What is true freedom? True freedom is when you are free inside your mind with your spirit connected to the love, will and hope of God. America is a land where our ancestors sought freedom, especially religious freedom. They sought freedom from economic, political and social oppression -- and most significantly from religious persecution.

When we are free, we are often thought of as free from enslavement or prison. Usually prison is thought of as external with walls and bars restricting freedom of movement. However, sometimes prison is internal, and this type of prison does not need walls or bars because we help create it with invisible walls and bars inside our own mind. We enclose ourselves in a prison of our mind limiting our will-power, our desire to understand, and our ability to initiate or respond to acts of service or kindness.

Looking at another extreme, a prisoner in the worst type of prison cell in shackles or undergoing torture is still free to love God and connect in their innermost mind with their spirit, despite their external suffering due to imprisonment. Our minds focusing on our spiritual connection to God can soar with our spirits to a place where God can easily relate to us, regardless of the harshness of our external conditions. God also experienced eons of suffering after we fell away from God’s plan in the Garden. In our intimate moments with God our spirits can then touch and taste their first true freedom.

In America we often take for granted the freedom that our ancestors fought for with their lives. We established freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion (and from a state-imposed religion as well). These were earned freedoms. However, the most valuable true freedom comes by the grace of God built on the foundation of our capacity to experience and share the true love of God. This true love of God can only be experienced in the nuclear family.

The family is the true school of love: this is where all the aspects of love are to be learned. The cornerstone of the family is the parents. They are the progenitors of our race and as they age and become grandparents they represent God more fully. A family based on true love must encompass three generations: the grandparents who represent God (the past and all historical tradition), the parents who represent the present embodiment of true love, and the children who are the future of true love. Through the relationships between three generations in the family (the grandparents, the parents and the children) we can encompass all the expanses and depths of the ultimate expressions of love.

And where is God? God is right in the center co-loving and co-experiencing the co-joy with the family members helping, loving, caring for and sharing with each other. This is the ultimate goal of life and the purpose of God’s creation.

As my means of living, I work with disabled special adults and they are basically pretty happy most of the time despite their handicaps. Why? Because happiness is deeper than our physical capacities and the restrictions must help them to focus more on what they can do with their minds. And a mind is a very powerful tool when focused on the joy of living found when embracing a positive attitude nurtured by our love relationship with God.

A rich athlete living only for themselves can die as a lonely, poor individual even when surrounded by a crowd of admirers. Admirers who only want to be part of the action and only want a piece of the pie for themselves. This athlete had no real friends and had trouble even being a friend to themselves.

However, a poor cripple living at home in a loving family will die happy and rich in relationships when mutual caring and nurturing in existing relationships evolve in their fullest capacity.

So what are the attributes of our freedom? Most essential is our spirit. Without it we would not even exist. Next is another thing we all often take for granted: air. Without air our existence would last only minutes on the earth. After that is water. We can only live several weeks to months without replenishing our body’s water supply. Water also is a symbol of the purity we should always strive for. Next is food. Even more importantly we need a balance of nutrition to maintain our health and serve God to our optimum capacity. After that comes staples such as clothing and shelter. These serve several purposes: one is protection from the elements and more important is to provide sanctuary to preserve our dignity, modesty and purity!

Then come cultural acquirements which expand and deepen the quality of our freedom such as the expressions through the modern arts and the conveniences and luxuries provided by modern technology and science. This enhances and redefines our definition of freedom.

Finally, the last stage is the preserving of freedom for our future generations. We need to store our surplus. This is a very important concern. Emergency supplies and rations should always be maintained and rotated to aid in times of emergency, calamity or war. The preservation and passing on of our civilization to our descendants is being constantly improved by modern technological innovations.

Another important factor concerning freedom is that it must be earned. True freedom is not really free! The more freedom one obtains the more responsibilities one has. It takes time to develop honor and trust in relationships giving freedom quality attributes. For example, look at our development from birth. A baby is basically only free to eat, sleep, use the provided diaper facilities and coo or cry: a somewhat limited freedom. In childhood and adolescence we look for friends and want to be treated fairly. This is when trust becomes important as we seek out friends who will play fair with us. As adults we then become legally, morally and spiritually responsible for the upbringing of our children. We seek schools, churches and organizations we can entrust to help us co-raise our children.

God is the true author of our freedom. Especially, God hand-picked America to be a showcase for freedom. However, sadly, taking-things-for-granted and apathy have enveloped our land. Individualism, greed and the seeking of material wealth have taken a front seat in many Americans’ lives. The seeking of satisfaction and self-gratification through drugs and free sex is breaking down America and destroying our families, society and especially our young people. Our freedom has become ugly and turned into license. America needs a wake-up call from God’s representatives in order to survive.

So our cherished freedoms the pioneers worked and fought so hard to earn are being flushed away by a generation which lavishes in luxury while almost half of the rest of the world is starving, has no electricity or running water, and goes to bed fearing violence and war as victims every night! This is the ugly reality of the abuse of freedom and the uncontrolled inception of license.

The thing which causes freedom to degrade into license is a spiritual factor called sin. The force of love being more powerful than the force of principle caused the fall. Freedom did not cause the fall. License or the abuse of freedom helped to cause the fall. So we can conclude that America continuing on its present course will fall as did the Roman Empire. We need to study and learn deeply from history!

What kind of freedom is in our destiny? There are many factors at play in the future quality of our freedom. Freedom is determined and enhanced by the health of our economy, the quality of our government, our physical age (child, adult or senior), the weather conditions, our attitudes, our educational level, our philosophy of life, our religious beliefs, our connections with the arts, and on and on.

If we look at the history of freedom we can see that in the past freedom was mainly for the upper-class, rich, royalty or nobility. In the present, freedom has expanded with various degrees of success to the common populace. In the future, as we enter the space age and explore the universe, will we take our freedom with us to share, deepen and expand, or will we continue to prolong God’s plan for us and expand license and inflicted pain to other worlds? The answer is within us and up to us. Let us all pray to God that we can search our hearts to do God’s will and all earn the ultimate true freedom in the ideal cosmos both in the physical world and in the spiritual world. Let us pray. Amen.

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