We need freedom for all (not a free for all)

On a day when our country honors the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., my mind thinks of freedom. Freedom and equality is something that he gave his life for and something that we should use our lives to keep, and yet my thoughts today are much more around how we fight for and keep freedoms than freedom itself.

We live in the age of rage; a time when the mob rules and fear of saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing or having the wrong thing that you said or did decades ago runs wild. What we are witnessing is almost a cultural free for all, and yet freedom for all won’t be achieved through a free for all.

I think that when Dr. King said, “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred,” he had this idea in mind. We can’t fight for freedom on the outside if we aren’t first set free on the inside. After all, if the mobs that riot eventually rule, then their rule will be fueled by whatever rules their heart.

This begs the question, “What motivates the mission?” Of course, not everyone who advocates for freedom or equality is an angry, out-of-control citizen, but if anger or rage fuels our quest for freedom, then anger and rage will mark our lives of freedom.

In the end, freedom for all that is achieved through free for alls can’t bring freedom at all.

Let’s put down the cup of bitterness and hatred and drink from the cup of sacrificial love and servanthood that Jesus drank from. That is the path to freedom for all, and when we take it, we’ll find that a mob can’t rule where the King already reigns.

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