The Bible teaches the reality and identity of Truth. Just as the Bible’s revelations on morality are unique in their diamond-hard purity and brilliance, so too does a concept of God as a supremely just and loving God derive exclusively from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. Religious gods are always fierce and distant, or capricious and detached; Jehovah God alone is immanent and approachable. Likewise, the fundamental social principles of liberty, freedom and equality derive not from the mind of man or from any ancient civilization, including the Greeks and Romans: their exclusive source is the Bible.
But just as the view of God as Love is only half a view (and a dangerous one at that, if His Holiness and Justice is ignored), so ideas about freedom and liberty are dangerous if viewed through a fog, and out of context. The biblical concept of liberty refers exclusively to the God-given gift of choice regarding obedience to God and submission to God (hence the term “soul liberty”). It is a rare and precious gift potentially either a blessing or a curse, for it will lead ultimately to freedom or enslavement. When we choose God, we are set free from slavery to sin and from the fear of death. The purpose of this freedom is to enable the joyful worship of God and not, as some would suppose, to enable behavior according to the dictates of individual conscience. That, in the Bible’s view, would drive man back into slavery!
There was a time in history when these principles were clearly understood. When Thomas Jefferson invoked the concepts of freedom and liberty, he was articulating truths that were familiar to him and to others embarked on the grand adventure of establishing a new nation, under God. It is clear from his “Statute of Religious Freedom” (1786) that Jefferson understood that the inner duty of conscience towards the Creator was the ground of liberty. In this view, obedience to God comes before civil society, state, family and any other institution.
In this era of moral equivalence, it is probably necessary to point out that Jefferson’s frame of reference was the God of the Bible. Imagine what the logical end would be of a society where obedience to this God is viewed as the supreme good! Fortunately, we do not need to speculate too much or look too far. History shows that societies that achieved the greatest good for the greatest number of their people—though in many respects imperfect because of innate human imperfection—have been societies where Biblical principles were common currency; namely the ancient Kingdom of Israel under David and Solomon; Great Britain, from, roughly, 1611 to 1918; and the United States of America, from 1776 to, say, 1946.
Conversely, the oppressive tyrannies of Roman Catholic and Islamic-inspired societies are engraved on the historical record, and the blood-soaked self-declared atheist regimes vie with them from the pages of more recent history. Fascists in Italy, Nazis in Germany and Communists in the Soviet Union, China and elsewhere have reaped a harvest of hundreds of millions of murdered and tortured souls. These latter tyrants rejected the dogma of “religion” as they splashed around in the bloodshed permitted by the ultimate relativism of all things, drawing comfort in their moral and physical depravations from the “gospels” according to Darwin, Marx and Nietzsche: the strong survive and the weak perish.
Dostoevsky got it right: “If there is no God, everything is permitted.”