Over the past several weeks, we've been looking at the blessings in the Beatitudes. These were intended to define the attitudes necessary for followers of Christ to employ in order to remain effective and faithful to God. Throughout His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus introduces practices that seem foreign to most folks, and yet surprisingly logical. They are logical as long as you can see the overall goal and objective of living according to those divine directives.
In many ways, the founders of this nation realized in order to maintain a free society, these Christ
sanctioned ordinances must be in place, otherwise freedom as we know it can’t exist. Listen to a few of our founders’ statements on the necessity of these attitudes amongst our citizens for freedom to thrive, or even last.
Patrick Henry: “… virtue, morality, and religion [are the] armor, my friend, and [it is] this alone, that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed (1891).”
John Adams: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.... Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other (1854).”
Noah Webster: “[T]hose who destroy the influence and authority of the Christian religion, sap the
foundations of public order, of liberty, and of republican government (1832).
Jedidiah Morse: “To the kindly influence of Christianity we owe that degree of civil freedom, and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys. In proportion as the genuine effects of Christianity are diminished in any nation, either through unbelief, or the corruption of its doctrines, or the neglect of its institutions; in the same proportion will the people of that nation recede from the blessings of genuine freedom, and approximate the miseries of complete despotism. All efforts to destroy the foundations of our holy religion, ultimately tend to the subversion also of our political freedom and happiness. Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them (1799).”
George Washington: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness [which are] the duties of men and citizens… Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. (1796).”
Proverbs 29:2-4, “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when a wicked man rules, the people groan. The king establishes the land by justice, but he who receives bribes overthrows it.”
Our job as Christians is to promote what Christ introduced as the “pillars” of following him. These
Beatitudes are essential for the church to remain a divine institution rather than a man-made mockery of God, and these same principles are what are required for any nation to enjoy freedom. This Memorial Day, take time to remember those who modeled Christianity well according to the pattern Jesus laid out for us in the Beatitudes.
