We Hold These Truths...

July 4^th has long been a favorite holiday of mine. American flags ripple in the hot summer breeze. The smell of charcoal grills permeates virtually every neighborhood. Local townships invite their citizens to gather for illustrious (and sometimes not so illustrious) fireworks shows often timed perfectly to Lee Greenwood, Ray Charles, and marching bands of the various branches of our armed services. We salute our country and its founding by taking a day off from work and gathering with loved ones to enjoy the liberties which our forefathers declared to be ours in 1776. Fifty-six men risked their lives by signing their names to the document we now refer to as the Declaration of Independence. In doing so, they announced to a mostly unsympathetic world the principles which would guide this nation through its infancy and into adulthood. However many Americans, in the midst of their traditional celebrations, fail to fully appreciate what those principles are and how they relate to American citizens even in a time which is radically different from the one in which they were first expressed.

In The Second Treatise on Civil Government, John Locke proposes that in their natural state, all men are equal, none having the right to govern another. As evidence, he argues that Adam had no “natural right” to govern the world. Even if he had, we are all his descendants and therefore all have equal claim to inherit that right. Locke further explains this reasoning by invoking the name of God:
“The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges everyone and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions; for men being all the workmanship of the one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker; all the servants of one sovereign Master, sent into the world by His order and about His business; they are His property, whose workmanship they are made to last during His, not one another’s pleasure.”
John Locke claims that all men, having been created by God, are bound to serve him and not dominate each other.

Locke’s influence on Thomas Jefferson and the other designers of our republic is apparent in the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence which references the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” as the justification for dissolving political ties with Great Britain. Examine the most widely memorized text of the Declaration in light of what Locke wrote:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
As followers of Jesus we must recognize that our American liberties originate from the same place as our Christian liberties: our divine Creator. It is God who gives us our rights, not the United States Government or any other man-made institution. Jefferson drove this point home in his Notes of the State of Virginia by asking, “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?” Far from being the Deist that many modern historians like to accuse him of being, Jefferson believed that God was alive, active, and ruling in the affairs of men. So much so, that he was afraid God would smite the United States for perpetuating slavery.

As the flags go up and the sparklers are lit, let us take a moment this Fourth of July to reflect not just upon our nation’s birthday but also upon the religious principles which, in the view of our founders, necessitated it.