The New American Revolution: The Fourth of July and True Freedom

Last updated on: July 3, 2015 at 11:15 am by Adam Ericksen

The New American Revolution: The Fourth of July and True Freedom 2015-07-03T11:15:21-05:00 Adam Ericksen

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Tomorrow we will celebrate Independence Day and the freedom that was granted as the United States threw off the chains of tyranny from England.

The United States was founded on a freedom that was established through war and violent rebellion. Freedom comes at a cost, many say. American “freedom” was birthed by war and war has been our Mother ever since.

The United States has been at war for 93% of our history. 222 years out of 239 years of US history, we have been at war to fight for our freedom.

Make no mistake about it. The United States isn’t free. We are enslaved to violence.

And we celebrate that violence every Fourth of July. The Fourth of July is based on a lie that freedom comes through war. But the Revolutionary War did not bring freedom. As the history of the United States shows, it only enslaved us to a future of violence.

When our “freedom” comes at the expense of another person’s life, our freedom has become an idol.

True freedom cannot be taken from another. That grasping for freedom from another is what the Christian tradition calls original sin. Like René Girard claims, that grasping over and against another person leads to an escalation of rivalry that leads to disastrous consequences of violence and war.

The time has come to stop celebrating the violence behind Independence Day. True freedom, true independence, has nothing to do with violence. Rather, true freedom acknowledges our interdependence. As long as the United States continues with our war record, we will never experience true freedom. Instead, we will ensure our enslavement to violence with our idolatrous view of freedom.

Fortunately, there is an alternative. True freedom that acknowledges our interdependence recognizes that our future cannot be one of a relationship that is violently over and against an “other.” True freedom recognizes that our future depends on us being nonviolently with one another.

Girard states that especially in our modern world of nuclear weapons, “The definitive renunciation of violence will become for us the condition for the survival of humanity itself and for each one of us.” The United States will be truly free when it has a new revolution that definitively renounces violence and war.

But for the new American Revolution, freedom from violence isn’t enough. We need the freedom to love.

For Christians in particular, true freedom is the freedom to love. True freedom has nothing to do with killing our enemies. The true freedom that Christ brings is the freedom to nonviolently love our enemies. Love frees us from enslavement to violence and frees us to participate in the Kingdom of God. That Kingdom is an alternative to America’s history of violence and war. True freedom doesn’t participate in a relationship of violent reciprocity. It stops violence by responding to it with love.

The Apostle Paul summed it up like this,

For freedom Christ set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit to the yoke of slavery … For you were called to freedom, brothers, and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

The idolatrous freedom of the United States has been self-indulgent because it comes in the name of war. America’s enslavement to violence and war is a spit in the face of Christ and the freedom he brought. The only alternative to our enslavement to violence is the freedom of Christ’s nonviolent love.

The good news is that more Americans than ever before are recognizing that we need a new American Revolution of nonviolent love. So, this Fourth of July, celebrate true freedom. Let the fireworks remind you that Christ has set us free from violence and free to love all people, including those we call our enemies.

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