It bothered me to think that our Liberty Bell was broken. What a pity that the very symbol of "give me liberty or give me death" could no longer ring out in the splendor for which it was designed. I took a closer look at the bell and read the inscribed message from the Bible: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof" Lev. 25 vs 10 The parks ranger said a chime that changed the world rang from that bell in the tower of Independence Hall. On July 8, 1776 it called citizens to hear the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence. Liberty is the soul of that document. How sad, I mused, that this bell should be cracked.
I now view it as a visual prophecy of what our nation would do with liberty. We have maintained the basic concept. Like the wonderful way in which Philadelphia displays the bell we have built something very attractive around the notion of liberty. But we are stuck with the fact that at the heart of it all we have broken the original idea.
I believe there can be no liberty without law. This week at the National Day of Prayer the thought struck me again as we sang the second verse of "O beautiful for spacious skies." It ends "America, God mend thine every flaw, confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law." That's it! National liberty is the product of individual self-control. Having laws on the statute books that prohibit lies, theft or murder are useless until you and I bend our wills to live within their boundaries. If we won't the law needs to be strong enough to take away our liberty. We need laws.
But whose law - man's or God's? Time was when Americans thought that there need be no choice between those. That era has ended. The 10 commandments were taught at school. The Decalogue was displayed on courthouses. The ten commandments were even made into a movie that made people think Moses looked like Charlton Heston!
The song said: "God mend thine every flaw." Thus the poet thought flaws existed. Laws do that. They, by their very existence, point out the tendency of the human heart to stray. For example the last of the 10 commandments rebukes the greediness that can arise out of capitalism. The church would do well to remind the nation that liberty to be selfish is no liberty at all. It's bondage to materialism and hedonism. We must call on people to repent. Some believers would rather call on God to "rephrase".
The covered 10 commandments is our new approach. We don't want God's laws associated with our courthouses. There's a very important reason and it's not just separation of church and state! The deeper motivation is that God's laws prohibit some of the lifestyle liberties we have given ourselves. Our nation is divided in its concept of liberty. Some want liberty based on whatever society will permit. Others wish for liberty to conform to the Bible.
Consider our two most recent presidents. To one the Bible says "Adultery is sin". He responds by splitting hairs over the meaning of the word "is". To the other the Scriptures say "Drunkenness is sin." He not only turns from boozing at 40 but often publicly acknowledges that he was sinning. Both men illustrate an approach to God's laws. They are us! America is this amazing country where both approaches to liberty are held in tension. The USA has built a very elaborate superstructure on a flawed bell. What will happen if those living by God's laws drastically decline in numbers?