A National Day Of Freedom

From American Vision:

A National Day of Freedom


By Joel McDurmon
Published: February 6, 2009

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Sunday, February 1, 2009, was the 60th anniversary of the National Day of Liberty. Officials chose the particular date of February 1 because it was on that day that President Lincoln (besides his many flaws) signed the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlawing slavery. The commemorative day was conceived of and first informally celebrated by a former slave, Major Richard R. Wright, who wished for a yearly commemoration of the event. A year after his death, Truman signed a bill (July 1948) proclaiming the observation on Feb. 1.



Wright was the valedictorian of the first class to graduate from Atlanta University. He had fought in the Spanish-American War, and founded the first African-American owned bank in the North in 1921, which bank by the way, withstood the Great Depression. Wright married one woman and fathered nine children, and later in life became a bishop in the Africa-Methodist-Episcopal church.

So we have this day, which few people know about, called National Freedom Day. And it just so happens to coincide with the reading of Deuteronomy 4 today on the Fourth Sunday of Epiphany, a church season in which we take note of the manifestation of the Gospel to all nations. Deuteronomy 4 captures the purposes of God in forming a free nation for that purpose: possessing the land, the establishment of His law, what makes for the greatness and wisdom of a nation in righteousness, and the mandate for educating the future generation in these things.

When I come across a day like this that highlights the theme of freedom, I like to stop and ask myself: exactly what are we talking about? What is Freedom? Most people when asked to define that term would not be able to do so without using its synonym “liberty.” “That’s easy. Freedom is liberty.” Of course, what is Liberty? “Well, that’s easy. Liberty is Freedom.” You can see the problem. And the problem is actually deeper than that. If we intend to defend our Freedom, we’d better have a more substantial understanding of what it is.


The purely libertarian ethic says that everything is allowable provided it does not harm another person. Being nearly a libertarian myself I hesitate to critique the position—I love liberty. But this bare minimum ethic leads to some inconsistencies which can have disastrous results in society. For example, who defines what “harm” is? One person’s definition of harm will not be the same as another person’s. One person may extend “harm” all the way to emotional issues, in which case the State will eventually erect measures to punish even those who it deems hurt someone else’s feelings. Sounds absurd, but that’s the logical conclusion. In the movie I, Robot, the world is aided by the work of millions of worker robots all controlled by a central computer. The rules for robots were 1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; 2) A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. Perhaps you’ve read the book or seen the movie. Eventually the central computer evolves herself to the point that she makes her own decision without human programming.

What happens? She follows the logical conclusion of the first rule: she won’t let a human harm or be harmed. So she has the robots lock every human being in their own house, so they can’t harm each other, and a robot guards each one. That’s what happens when we confuse freedom from harm with Freedom: we confuse safety for freedom. And to paraphrase Franklin, “Those who would trade liberty for safety deserve neither.”

On another extreme, however, are those who would say that whatever consenting adults do between each other is allowable. If two men wish to join each other privately in a bedroom, who are you to say otherwise? This view completely ignores that God sees everything, and judges nations for their sins. Private sins between consenting adults put a nation is a much danger as open invasion from a foreign army. They invite God’s judgment, thus creating a public health hazard bigger than AIDS itself. Don’t talk to me about victimless crimes; all sin (not just homosexuality) puts whole peoples at risk. The libertine “do-what-you-will” ethic is in reality a threat to real liberty.


Freedom cannot exist in merely human terms, because freedom relies on prior conceptions of morality. The questions of “what is right?” and “what is wrong?” set boundaries to what we are free to do and not do, and what preserves a society as a free society. If we don’t have a transcendental standard of good and evil, then freedom for one man will inevitably conflict with that ideas of the next man. It devolves into either social anarchy, or dictatorship.

Interestingly, God reminds the Hebrews at this juncture of Deuteronomy 4, of their pilgrimage through the wilderness, and of His giving them the law amidst smoke and fire in Horeb—that He had declared unto them His covenant, the Ten Commandments. Later in the same passage God reminds them of the position He rescued them from—the tyranny of Egypt (4:37). Noting this reminds us of the prologue to those Ten Commandments: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery (Ex. 20:2).

The Ten Commandments are a Constitution of Liberty for a people whom God had delivered from slavery—slavery to sin, and slavery to fellow man. The Ten Commandments provide the definition of Freedom by setting the Theological and Practical boundaries that protect the opportunities and prosperity of man and society. It provides for theological freedom because God judges our actions in history, and thus our obedience as a nation leads to blessing. It provides for practical freedom in that it sets boundaries between fellow men that when honored bless society with trust, mutual prosperity, and benevolence.

Notice (in 4:13), He declared the covenant unto them. He did not ask, offer, there was no signing a contract; He did not beg, borrow, or plead. He did not stop to read the Rights of Man, or the Humanist Manifesto I, II, or III; He justdeclared the way of life. The covenant of life and liberty comes from above, not from the ideas, opinions, works, oragreement of man. The boundaries of human Freedom are set at their maximum already in the structure of God’s Covenant. It is our duty to recognize and obey the law of Freedom in God’s word, not to erect our own versions which lead to disaster.


So we have a blueprint for Freedom in God’s revealed will. We have addition boundaries in God’s decretive or secret will, which we experience in His Providence. A great restriction imposed upon us (and which we factor into the idea of true Freedom) is our respective positions in life, which result from the Providence of God. The atheist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre believed in the libertine ethic essentially; he concluded that for man to be free, God could not exist. That’s about as profound a statement as atheism has ever produced. He had it backwards in his personal choice; but he saw the vital link between man’s freedom and God’s providence.

Moses reminds the people in Deuteronomy 4:39 that the Lord, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other. That such a ruling, provident God exists, means that human Freedom has a transcendental, supernatural perspective. God rules our lives and our positions. This is not to blame God for anything, but realize that you aren’t free, for example, to live the lifestyles of the rich and famous if God has placed you in the middle class. You can’t escape those kinds limitations; accept them. Reality is, in a way, a limitation to freedom.

But this doesn’t stop some people; we have a tool in the modern world to temporarily avoid the limitations of lifestyle. It’s an illusion of escaping the bounds of reality. It’s called debt. Credit. I can spend now and have the lifestyle I don’t really deserve now. Payment? We’ll worry about that later. It creates the illusion of prosperity; and the more you partake of that illusion, the more it compounds itself. It in reality is a deeper form of bondage. Solomon taught that The rich rules over the poor, And the borrower becomes the lender’s slave (Prov. 22:7). This is a reality; debt is a form of slavery. To those who think that “slavery” was a racial institution that was abolished by the civil war, they need to go back to school (or really, get out of school, public school anyway) in order to apply the Biblical ideas of slavery to culture and find out the places that foul practice hides. According to Biblical thought, debt is slavery.


There are basically three institutions of slavery in modern life: debt, prison, and military conscription. Racial and chattel slavery between private individuals no longer exists in this country, but people sell themselves every day in order to obtain the illusion of a better lifestyle through borrowing money for unnecessary things. Among American households that have credit cards, the average debt is over $8,000 (although it’s about 10% of those in middles class households that carry the highest levels). And our government has historically done the same thing; and they’re doing it as we speak. The $700 billion bailout just broke the ice and set the precedent for more, and there will be more; now Congress, since they foolishly agreed to it, does not have the moral high ground to deny further billions if they wanted to, and they don’t want to anyway. We’re not only a nation of individuals with debt, we’re a nation running on debt, and have been for decades. Of course, the rest of the world does, too, so it will be interesting to see who the ultimate creditors are and who the slaves. In the end, I’m afraid, we’ll all face depression and possible mass bankruptcies and unemployment, and we’ll learn that we were collectively slaves to our own lust. That would interesting to think through beforehand.

Prison is another example of slavery. And it’s interesting that the Thirteenth Amendment allows for this exception:



Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Foreign occupation or military conscription are also both forms.


In the light of these things then, we can get a better idea of what God intends for a free nation. It is not the merely absence of personal constraints in the area of spending money, sexual license, or personal license in the perspective of our wills. Freedom is the society God has planned and provided for with his covenant. There is no freedom outside of that system of law and behavior.

In verse 35 of our text we have an interesting dove-tail between our two lessons today. It reads, speaking of the covenant, To you it was shown that you might know that the Lord (Deut. 4:35). It highlights the privilege of being God’s people: the great grace of God that comes with His election and enlightenment enabling His people to see His truth. A million passers-by may see the Ten Commandment and have various reactions; God’s people hear them, and recognize the way of life, liberty, and happiness. And this is one of the lessons we learn in Ephesians 2:



For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.…

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.



Freedom is not the work of man, but of God. The liberation of the human soul from bondage is the effort of God, and cannot be achieved by anything man does of his own strength. And yet most people quoting this passage stop at verse 9—“not of works.” Paul however continued to the part about the good works God has foreordained that we do. We are not saved by good works, but we are saved unto good works, namely the works of His commandments. Any person not implementing the commandments as a way of life in every area of life is selling out the very salvation they claim to have apart from works.

Moses also tells the Hebrews that God performed His act of liberation Because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their descendants after them. And He personally brought you from Egypt by His great power (Deut. 4:37). It was an argument about the Providence He showed through their fathers. On the level of a nation, I don’t think it’s too far of a stretch to say that He showed an extraordinary level of Providential events with our founding fathers. And nothing to that group of founders was more central than freedom, but freedom through the rule of law, with checks and balances.


Perusing some of John Adams lesser-known writings I discovered some early essays he wrote. Remember, Adams was likely a Unitarian—not what we would consider orthodox, yet devoted to Christian morality. He was a lawyer, and the foundations of law he took very seriously. On an essay about “Private Revenge” he wrote that from the source of vengeful human nature



arises the ardent desire in men to judge for themselves, when, and to what degree they are injured, and to carve out their own remedies for themselves. From the same source arises that obstinate disposition in barbarous nations to continue barbarous, and the extreme difficulty of introducing civility and Christianity among them. For the great distinction between savage nations and polite ones, lies in this,—that among the former every individual is his own judge and own executioner; but among the latter all pretensions to judgment and punishment are resigned to tribunals erected by the public;…[1]



Suffice it to say that at an early age—this was written in 1763, Adams was 28—Adams saw not just some general deity or god or morality as central to human civility, but Christianity. The God of the Bible was the One necessary and in mind for our fathers when they wrote about nature and nature’s God. And it was His law upon which the success of our elected tribunals depends. “Freedom” by any other standard is an abandonment of the God of Freedom. Freedom by any other name is a self-delusion.

This is one reason why, I believe, Adams also undertook to write about “Self-Delusion,” for the prevention of which he prescribed this:

Let us examine, then, with a sober, a manly, a British [we can forgive him for that part], and a Christian spirit; let us neglect all party virulence and advert to facts; let us believe no man to be infallible or impeccable in government, any more than in religion; take no man’s word against evidence, nor implicitly adopt the sentiments of others, who may be deceived themselves, or may be interested in deceiving us.[2]




Adams knew well just exactly what it is that undermines such institutions of God’s providence: the wickedness of the human heart. In ending his third essay on private revenge, he hearkened directly to the words of Scripture:



Let me conclude, by advising all men to look into their own hearts, which they will find to be [quoting Jeremiah 17:9] deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Let them consider how extremely addicted they are to magnify and exaggerate the injuries that they are offered to themselves, and to diminish and extenuate the wrongs that they offer to others.[3]



The foundations of freedom, friends, must be found in a nation’s ethics. God raised and fell nations based on His election of them, and based on their subsequent obedience to his covenant. We are a blessed nation, with a godly heritage in many ways. That God moved specially among our founding fathers, and with some great men in subsequent history such as Major Richard Wright, is evident if anything in history is. We have to look to that covenant that he declared to us, if we hope to perpetuate that special godly civility.

Even if we’re just a remnant, we can do our part in honoring God’s Freedom. Based on the faithfulness of a few, God can drive out nations that are bigger and mightier than we. We can tell our neighbors and teach our children. We can worship in spirit and truth and we can desire to conform ourselves more purely to his law. And as Jesus taught, if you continue in His word, you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free (John 8:31).).

Endnotes:




[1] John Adams, “On Private Revenge: No. 1,” The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2000), 5.

[2] John Adams, “On Self-Delusion: No. 2,” The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2000), 13.

[3] John Adams, “On Private Revenge: No. 3,” The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2000), 17.