Freedom or Tyranny

By Al Baker - Posted at Vanguard Presbytery:

“When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when a wicked man rules, people groan.” -Proverbs 29:2

Os Guinness tells the story of a young Massachusetts scholar in 1843 doing research on the American Revolutionary War and the events which led to it. In his research the young scholar interviewed ninety-one year old Captain Levi Preston who had fought at Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775. The young man wanted to know why Captain Preston had fought. What drove him to it? The scholar asked if the “intolerable oppressions” of the British were the catalyst. Preston replied, “Oppressions? I didn’t feel them.” Then Preston was asked, “Weren’t you oppressed by the Stamp Act?” “I never saw one of those stamps. I certainly never paid a penny for them.” The scholar asked, “Okay, but what about the tea tax?” Preston, “Tea Tax? I never drank a drop of the stuff. The boys threw it all overboard.” “Well then,” said the scholar, “I suppose you had been reading Harrington, or Sidney, and Locke about the eternal principles of liberty.” “Never heard of them,” said Preston. “We read only the Bible, the Catechisms, Watt’s Psalms and Hymns, and the Almanac.” The young scholar finally asked, “Well then, what was the matter? And what did you mean in going to the fight?” Preston replied, “Young man, what we meant in going for those Redcoats was this: We always had been free, and we meant to be free always. They didn’t mean we should.”[1] There is, within the heart of every man, woman, and child, an insatiable desire to be free.

However, we must remember that righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a disgrace to any people (Proverbs 14:34). The founders of our constitution knew this very well. By no means were all of them true Christians, but they nonetheless had a “Christian memory” which served as the foundation of their thinking, having imbibed of the writings of John Locke, James Harrington, and Algernon Sydney (1622-1683).[2] They understood that for any republic to exist it must be founded on freedom, virtue, and faith. Freedom cannot exist without virtue, virtue cannot exist without faith, and faith cannot exist without freedom. Thomas Jefferson, in 1794, five years after George Washington became our first president wrote, “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis—a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God, that they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just—that His justice cannot sleep forever.”[3]

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