For Wilshire Baptist Church
How was your Fourth of July celebration? We had a great lunch with our mothers at our house — hot dogs and all the fixins — and then we opted to stay home and watch the annual “Capitol Fourth” concert on PBS. But then we did go out and sit on the porch for a while to watch our neighborhood fireworks. “Ah, Sweet Freedom!” is what we might say at a moment like that, but instead we were marveling at how people deliberately ignore the rules, because the fireworks we saw and heard were totally illegal.
It’s an interesting phenomenon in our community and maybe yours too: People celebrating liberty and freedom by blatantly breaking the law. It all seems like good fun and usually is until people get hurt or houses catch on fire, thus the law that prohibits what they are doing. And yet in our neighborhood near the heart of the city, the illegal explosions begin on July 3, reach a fever pitch on July 4 and continue to a much lesser extent for a night or two afterward.
Here’s the deal: Freedom doesn’t mean you can do whatever you wish. People who operate that way are practicing something more akin to “freedumb” in my opinion. No, true freedom implies responsibility, and perhaps the top responsibility is being mindful of the rights, wellbeing and safety of our neighbors.
Interestingly, fireworks in the neighborhood is a good example of how misinterpreted freedom can cause harm. Fireworks exploding in the sky are fun and beautiful and the professional shows are fantastic, but there is potential danger on the ground and from the sky and more so in the hands of amateurs. One year some new neighbors launched fireworks in their front yard. I squelched the urge to call the police but I certainly had cause: it was late, it was loud, and there were small children playing all around. Thankfully nobody got hurt, but the next morning there was cardboard and paper fireworks debris in the street and surrounding yards including ours. I’m thankful we weren’t in a drought that year.
This year another thought came to mind: the financial waste. On Fourth of July morning we walked on a nearby nature trail, and the first thing we saw as we pulled into the parking lot was a burned-out, coffee-can-sized firework canister. I looked it up on the internet and watched a video of what it does: For 45 seconds it spews a ground-level fountain of fire and high-flying exploding fireballs. You can have all that for just $23. Really, $23 for just 45 seconds? People are free to spend their money any way they want, but surely most of us have higher priorities. If not, we should.
Perhaps it’s a stretch to go to the Bible in the middle of what appears to be a rant about illegal fireworks, but there is plenty written there about freedom, rights and responsibilities. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he says: “‘I have the right to do anything,’ you say – but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’ – but not everything is constructive. No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.”
Fireworks are just one example of where “freedom and rights” can get confused with “wants and desires.” And the Fourth of July is really more about our collective freedom as a nation and not so much about our personal freedom. Likewise, the Bible is about much more than our personal path to salvation; it also covers our relationship with each other.
In that regard, church and state just might be on the same page, and caring about one another might just be the sweetest freedom of all.