Let Freedom Ring!

What does “freedom” mean exactly? 

I love the idea in my Christian faith life that we are free when we surrender ourselves to the Lord our God.  Imagine that?  The only way to become "free" is to belong to the higher being.

Is freedom the luxury to choose whether to mask or not wear a mask? Truth be told, the choice is available.  You may not like the consequences of your choice (denied entry into a desired location) but make no mistake, it is a choice.  

Could it be that “freedom” is the ability as humans to adapt our lives to live with a virus rather than let it overtake us?  

A question to ponder in that regard:  Are animals “free”?  Why yes, you’re probably thinking, animals are absolutely free!  Do animals have rights according to our Constitution? Can they own guns?  Can they go wherever they please?  Not if it’s a golf course for certain! (of course we are re-venturing down the rabbit hole of "choices") but I digress... So next thought, humans aren’t animals.  Scientifically speaking, we are, yet how are we different?

In anthropology, the practice of burying the dead to honor them makes a species “human”.  There are studies finding other creatures do that as well, in fact many behaviors that psychologists and anthropologists believed were only "human" traits are now being discovered in other animal species.

  I once read an article where a researcher had pointed out that the first sign of civilized (notice new word added) human behavior was caring for an injured other; ie) a fossil of a broken bone which had healed because it had been set.  Think about that!  Our ability to care for one another makes us civilized, not our freedoms afforded us in our Constitution.  Although I will quickly clarify that statement in that our Constitution makes us uniquely American.

We don’t have to look at everything that’s going on in the world today as an either/or.  As something to take away our liberty or add to it. Our choices in our lives are what give us freedom. We have the freedom to choose whether or not to receive education.  We have the freedom to choose what line of work we’d like to do to earn wages.

We aren’t a communist or socialist nation where the government tells us what we will do for our daily wage. I think that’s the confusion people have when they talk about “communism” or “socialism”. There’s a huge difference between democratic socialist and just socialist; but Bernie dropped out of the race so that’s kind of all irrelevant now anyway. 

The youth will continue to try to educate us and they will also shake their heads just as we did at the "boomers".

Yet we prosper as humans.  Moreover we prosper as civilized humans.  For certain, we prosper as Americans!  God Bless the land of the free and the home of the brave!