Author Of Liberty

It’s a risky thing to mix politics and religion. It’s too easy to confuse the two. And if I remember correctly, one of the major bones of contention during my predecessor’s tenure was over that very thing: whether or not it was proper to have the American flag in the sanctuary.

Many people do seem to think of America as the new Israel, the Promised Land, partly of course because of the fact that New England, at least, was settled by people seeking freedom, Not only religious freedom, but the chance to build a whole new society, one based on Biblical principles. The Puritans who settled in New England had a vision of a City on a Hill, one whose light would be seen by all nations, living out Jesus’ words to the disciples:

You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. [Mt 5:14-16]

And if that is the case, if America really was supposed to be a new Israel, then Moses’ words to the Israelites are even more to the point as we look back at where we’ve come from, and forward to where we’re going. Now, I do not think that America is the new Israel; the new Israel is the church of Jesus Christ. But America was founded on Christian principles, and the freedom we enjoy is a gift from God. Patrick Henry - remember the great orator who preferred liberty to life? - said, “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians: Not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” When we forget who it was who gave us our freedom, we start down the road to a new kind of slavery.

Remember where they were, those first Israelites, when Moses was speaking these words? I think of the whole book of Deuteronomy as Moses’ final sermon series on their wilderness experience to prepare them for their entry into the promised land. God had freed them from slavery and oppression under the Egyptians, given them the law, defeated innumerable enemies, fed them in the wilderness - and yet their record wasn’t anything to write home about. Every time things didn’t go just the way they wanted it to, they started complaining and wanted to turn back:

The rabble among them had a strong craving; and the Israelites also wept again, and said, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at." [Num 11:4-6]

They were free, but it wasn’t what these former slaves, newly freed and uneducated in self-government, had expected. The escaping tribes weren’t much like the rowdy and self-willed sons of Jacob who had gone down to Egypt ten generations before; they had grown soft. Even when Pharaoh started killing off their firstborn, did anyone notice that they never appeared to have thought either of rebelling or pulling up stakes and returning to where their ancestors had come from? They were used to having someone else tell them what to do and where to go, used to having someone else be responsible for the condition of their lives, used to having someone to blame when things went wrong. And so they blamed Moses. They were really rebelling against God, of course, but Moses was a softer target. The non-Levite tribes targeted Moses again later on, because they were jealous of the status he and his brother Aaron had in terms of access to God, conveniently forgetting two things: one, that Moses and Aaron had earned their places, and two, that being in charge meant more work, more responsibility, more risk, not less.

When the Spaniards conquered Peru some 500 years ago, they also enslaved the native population. But the Spaniards weren’t as evil as you might think: because most of the people were already slaves when the Spanish got there. You see, the Inca empire had conquered and enslaved the Andean and could direct their labor as he liked. tribes about seventy years before the Spanish had gotten there, and their king was also their god, and therefore owned them. Anyway, the moral of the story is, that when popular liberation movements began taking shape in the last fifty years or so, the native Quechua and others thought freedom meant being not having to work, meant that they could do what they liked and go where they liked and spend what they liked. They didn’t know how to plan ahead, how to decide what to plant and when, how to market their produce or manage disputes with their neighbors. And so they became very easy prey for the promises of violent Marxist revolutionaries and later of the drug lords.