July marks many emancipations for me. In addition to the obvious American Independence Day, this is also the month in which I settled all claims and counterclaims with my ex wife. I left an oppressive job to move to Vegas in July. It's the month in which I left for a mission, and the month in which I returned home. Two women broke up with me in July. Yesterday, the long string of hot weather in Vegas finally broke, and I felt strange celebrating it "only" being 106F. While I thank God for my freedom, all of these things come with a price, and sometimes we forget that.
This morning, as I jogged around the zip code, I marveled with great sadness at the debris littering the streets and gutters. Up near the temple, there was evidence of small fires, probably started by fireworks. I thought of all the money these things represented, money that we essentially just lit on fire for our own amusement. I always find this paradoxical since the municipalities and casinos provide fireworks that so many of my neighbors spend their own money. Perhaps most annoyingly, the fellow who owns the house next door which has renters was shooting off large rockets from the street, so close that they shook the house. I had a great view. It was super loud, and I remarked aloud at the smell of saltpeter, sulfur, and burnt paper that filled the air as my neighbors wasted their substance in riotous ways.
Very few of us consider really the cost of Freedom. I don't have any relatives who died in combat, but many of my college buddies didn't come home. With all the talk of slavery of late, everyone seems to forget how many Union soldiers died in the Civil War to secure freedom for the slave. For my own part, I know a little of that victory. On July 12, 2010, my attorney told me that I now knew how it felt to have to pay for my own freedom as we left the courthouse having to pay my ex wife more money. I won my freedom, but it came at a high price.
Ultimately, the price has already been paid for all men everywhere for all time. It was paid at Golgotha. God's own son sweat drops of blood and shed tears of pain so that anyone who wanted could be free. Most of us don't appreciate, understand, or avail ourselves of His vicarious sacrifice. Too many of my neighbors (I remind myself I live in "Sin City") think freedom is licence to live lives of licentiousness and lasciviousness. They think freedom means to do whatever they like. They think it doesn't hurt anyone. It already hurt Christ. Now, I will confess I don't really understand how it works, but I know THAT it works, because in my own private moments, I feel the quiet presence of the Comforter and through the spirit of God know that all is and will be well. That doesn't mean I believe it all the time, but I cannot deny it because I know I have felt it, and I know God knows that too. I think far too many of us run away from Christ, run away from freedom, and think that because we can drink beer, talk on our cell phones, post to our facebutt accounts, go out to parties, fornicate with strangers, get away with crimes because we don't get caught, and rise in rank despite our viles that we are free. We are not. We are already bought with a price. We are eternally indebted to God for all that we have and are. I awoke today because it was His good pleasure that I do so.
Everything comes with a price. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something. I find it absolutely infuriating and frustrating that so many of my contemporaries will spout this about things that excite me but totally swallow the logical fallacy that things are free that they happen to prefer and seek. Everything has an opportunity cost. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So maybe you won't feel it today or tomorrow or this decade, but those smug villains among us who think that they have escaped justice as they lie on their deathbeds without having faced the consequence in essence deny the Savior. If it's only a crime if you get caught, what need have they for a Savior? The price has been paid. They are still trying to outrun the posse out to collect the bounty on them without knowing how to really obtain amnesty. Liberty is not license; it is duty.
As beneficiaries of civil society, we have a divine duty to do all in our power to perpetuate principles of virtue, justice, and neighborliness. As parents, neighbors, employees, friends, countrymen, and members of the Family of Man, it is our imperative duty to nurture children, instill faith, and transmit to future generations the moral strengths and values that are important to civilization and vital to eternal salvation. How we do this is largely left up to us until and unless we transmute those ideas into ones that undermine civil law and God's law. That's the price of freedom. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and we must pay it if we intend to keep this Republic. When in doubt we must look upward; when we fall we must seek mercy. We get these from the Author of Freedom, from Nature's God, not from Gaia or government however worthy fealty to them may be.
I am not proud to be an American; I am supremely grateful. Only an infinitesimal fraction of God's children through all time have the privilege and honor to be born to the opportunities and advances of being born in this great land. As others looked upward last night to the display, I stood in my backyard, bowed my head, and I thanked God for His privileges on myself and any putative posterity with which He may deign favor me. In looking inward, I looked up to the heavens. I see different things perhaps than you do. I see myself eternally indemnified to my Creator and His Providence for the opportunities and obligations afforded me, and so I will stay true to my noble purpose because tolerance does not require me to abandon high moral ideals. Being free, being an American, being a Christian, and being prospered obligates me to pay a price, and it asks me to show my appreciation for the price already paid for me by the Savior of man. I don't know why He decided it was wise to birth me in this time, on these shores, to this family, and entrusted with the knowledge and talents I possess, but I know that as with all talents I am expected to do great things with them. Holidays like this invite us all to consider what sacrifice we are willing to set on the altar of freedom. What price will you pay?
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