Saturday was National Religious Freedom Day.
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
President Trump, in his Freedom of Religion proclamation, said in part "...we pledge to always protect and cherish this fundamental human right."
MLK said in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed."
The question in the new year of 2021 is making a distinction between who are the "oppressed" and who are the "oppressors?"
A closer look.
Be informed, not misled.
President Trump said in part in his proclamation of National Religious Freedom Day,
"Faith inspires hope. Deeply embedded in the heart and soul of our Nation, this transcendent truth has compelled men and women of uncompromising conscience to give glory to God by worshiping both openly and privately, lifting themselves and others up in prayer."
In his "I have a Dream Speech," MLK said, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that."
President-elect Biden has called this new year a "winter of darkness."
I would call it a new era of "fweedom."
She remembers being wheeled through an Oakland, California civil rights march in a stroller with no straps with her parents and her uncle. At some point, she fell from the stroller (few safety regulations existed for children's equipment back then), and the adults, caught up in the rapture of protest, just kept marching. By the time they noticed little Kamala was gone and doubled back, she was understandably upset. "My mother tells the story about how I'm fussing," Harris says, "and she's like, 'Baby, what do you want? What do you need?' And I just looked at her and I said, 'Fweedom'."
Fox News notes that her story is nearly identical to one told by Martin Luther King, Jr.
In a 1965 interview with Playboy Magazine, King told this story:
I will never forget a moment in Birmingham when a white policeman accosted a little Negro girl, seven or eight years old, who was walking in a demonstration with her mother. 'What do you want?' the policeman asked her gruffly, and the little girl looked up at him straight in the eye and answered 'Fee-dom'. She couldn't even pronounce it, but she knew it. It was beautiful! Many times when I have been in sorely trying situations, the memory of that little one has come into my mind, and it has buoyed me."
Harris is in good company with President-elect Biden.
In 1987, Biden ripped off British Labor leader Neil Kinnock's biography to embellish a weak resume during his first run for president. That falsehood and other revelations about plagiarism caused Biden to drop out of the race.
A new era of leadership based on the evolving "truth' that the end justifies the means, is about to begin.
As we watched our cities be burned, pillaged, and destroyed in the name of equality---with the rioters being praised rather than punished--we learned that freedom to the relativistic, secular progressive means doing anything you "want." However, to the conservative Christian, freedom is the power to do what you "ought."
True freedom.
An article on the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association defines true "freedom" as "Freedom from the penalty of sin" and "Freedom from the power of sin."
An excerpt from the article says, "In the United States some people want to throw out all Christian emphasis, all religious symbols. They want to be free from such 'bondage.'"
They continue: "Our forefathers did not feel that way. They desired that we should have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion: 'Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord" (Psalm 33:12). If we push God aside, may God have mercy upon us."
I believe the attack on our nation's most fundamental foundational beliefs will be attacked by this new administration. Looking at the people President-elect Biden is choosing for important and influential roles in the new administration is not encouraging.
Each of us, I believe, will be pressed to decide what we really believe and are willing to stand for.
A false "fweedom." Or true freedom based on the solid rock of biblical truth.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Bold. Be Faithful. Be Prayerful.