By Rev. Mark H. Creech
Executive Director
Christian Action League
The late renowned radio commentator Paul Harvey once told the story about a group of scientists who were training a chimpanzee to speak. For more than a decade they had diligently and patiently labored to enable the creature to form certain syllables.
Then came the day when the chimp was actually going to construct a sentence from the symbols it had been learning. Scientists from everywhere came and gathered in a room to watch a historic moment. They could hardly contain themselves as they pressed around the cage to see what the world’s most pampered, most patiently trained ape would say.
Said the chimpanzee: “Let me out!” [1]
All the amenities of life would mean nothing if there were no freedom. And if Jesus had never been born, freedom would have never existed, or if it did, it would have been exclusively the domain of the elite.
That little babe in Bethlehem’s manger, Jesus Christ, became the world’s greatest emancipator. He is without question the embodiment of both internal and external freedom. Wherever the Word of Christ has flourished in human hearts, freedom has expanded, while tyrants and despots have fallen.
Only a few hundred years ago, there was nothing on earth like the freedoms Americans take for granted today. And this is the great gift of Christianity to the world. The sixth President of the United States, John Quincy Adams once noted:
The birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior [and] forms a leading event in the progress of the gospel dispensation….the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth [and] laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity. [2]
Unfortunately, however, there are those who currently contend it is Christianity that is the impediment to freedom. They want to fulfill their every hedonistic affection and have no accountability to God or man. They shamelessly convert the precious concept of liberty into license, claiming that their objective is to make every person free. But like the blind following the blind, they would ultimately lead us all into the ditch.
The great scholar of Princeton, Charles Hodge, warned against this approach for America:
All are allowed to worship as they please, or not to worship at all, if they see fit. No man is molested for his religion or for his want of religion. No man is required to profess any form of faith, or to join any religious association. More than this cannot reasonably be demanded. More, however, is demanded. The infidel demands that government should be conducted on the principle that Christianity is false. The atheist demands that it should be conducted on the assumption that man is not a free moral agent…The sufficient answer to all is that it cannot possibly be done. [3]
Indeed, it cannot be done. Truly, as one Christmas hymn puts it, “Thou camest, O Lord, with the living word that should set thy people free…”
The first Christmas gift, which was wrapped in swaddling clothes, is why we are a liberated people. The Christian Action League is committed to keeping this truth before those who determine public policy. It is the rock on which our Republic rests. It is the hope of our state and nation. Without it, we cannot possibly remain free.
Merry Christmas from the staff and Board of Directors of the Christian Action League!
Resources:
[1] What If Jesus Had Never Been Born, D. James Kennedy, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2001, pg. 77
[2] John Quincy Adams, An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newport at Their Request on the Sixty-First Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (Newburyport: Charles Whipple, 1837) pp.5-6
[3] Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3 vols., III (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1970), 3:345-46.