The Freedom Cycle Series

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.”(1) The responsibility of which she spoke is a concern for the welfare of others, and the nation as a whole. When the citizens of a country become self-centered and me-oriented, freedom is soon lost.

Freedom is very costly. Millions of brave men and women died for the freedom we now experience in this country. Freedom does not come free of charge, for sacrifices have to be made. Freedom is not only obtained by the sacrifice of human life, it is gained by the sacrifice of personal entitlement for the good of the country as a whole. The concept of entitlement and individual rights has been taken to the extreme of disregard for all morality, authority, and the feelings of others for the sake of the individual.

Selfishness and apathy eventually lead to complete moral decay. Moral decay leads to abuses and criminal activity, which necessitates the establishment of more rules, laws and regulations to maintain order; and with the increase of regulations comes a decline in personal freedom. For example, terrorist activity has led to our airports becoming the place where we are least free in this country. The Constitution no longer applies when you set foot inside an airport.

With the idea of self in mind, we gladly accept the imposition of more rules and regulations, believing they are for our own well-being; but before long, all freedom is lost. In 1742 Scottish philosopher David Hume wrote, “It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom that it must steal in upon them by degrees and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes in order to be received.”(2)

This process of moving from a free nation to a nation under bondage is one we can observe in the Bible, and one of which the Lord warned Israel to watch out for. I believe it is imperative that we learn a huge lesson from the rise and fall of Israel, as our own country is teetering on the verge of bondage and loss of freedom.

I find it interesting that we will observe in the Scripture what has been noted of all great nations of the world. Professor Alexander Taylor, who lived at the time of the American Revolution, wrote that, “The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”(3) He said that they all progressed through a sequence which he called “The Cycle of Freedom.”

This cycle can be condensed into four stages (Charlie Crumley), which are: 1.) The Bondage Stage, 2.) The Freedom Stage, 3.) The Self-Interest Stage, and 4.) The Chaos Stage.(4) And under each stage we will examine two specific processes, for a total of eight processes altogether, which move a nation through each successive level of The Freedom Cycle (derived from Taylor’s model).

THE BONDAGE STAGE

We will begin by looking at The Bondage Stage. The Freedom Cycle starts with people being subjected to somebody or something. For example, Israel came under the bondage of Egypt.

Under Joseph the Israelites were free and living in prosperity and abundance in Goshen (Gn 47:27), and they owned real estate there (47:11, 27). They made their abode in the very best of the land of Egypt (47:6). The Lord had sent Israel to Egypt to save His people from a famine, but it was never His will that His children remain there and become enslaved.

The people had an opportunity to return to Canaan, but they refused (cf. Genesis 50:4-10, 14). They chose not to return, because liked where they were living. They liked all the free handouts of grain and provision from Egypt, and complacency with where they were living led to their enslavement.

I recently read the story of an Eastern European immigrant from one of the countries of the former Soviet Union. In a conversation with someone he asked, “Do you know how to capture wild hogs?” When the listener replied, “No” then the former resistance fighter said,

In the forests of my homeland live wild hogs. To capture them, we found a clearing and placed a pile of corn in its center, which we replenished every day. When the hogs found the corn they began to come every day to get a free meal. After a time, when they had gotten used to getting a free meal, we built a fence on one side of the clearing. The hogs became skittish at first, but soon came back to the clearing for the corn. Eventually they ignored the fence and became oblivious to the restriction on their freedom that it imposed.