Happy Patriot's Day!

April 19th, 1775, Old North Bridge, Concord, Massachusetts. The shot heard around the world began this nation's fight for independence. This day is a powerful reminder of many important beliefs I have. The first, and most important to me, is "No king but King Jesus!"

John Ashcroft was roundly criticized for his "No King but Jesus" speech at Bob Jones University, but he was only reminding us of our colonial and Revolutionary War heritage. In a 1774 report to King George, the Governor of Boston noted: "If you ask an American, who is his master? He will tell you he has none, nor any governor but Jesus Christ." The pre-war Colonial Committees of Correspondence soon made this the American motto: "No King but King Jesus." And this sentiment was carried over into the 1783 peace treaty with Great Britain ending that war, which begins "In the name of the most Holy and Undivided Trinity... ." (Catholic Education Resource Center)

(Is the United States a Christian nation? - No. Just read the news and anyone can see that it is not. Was it founded by mostly Christians based on Christian principles? - Yes!)

The second belief enshrined in that first gunshot is that free men have the God-given right to own and carry arms for self-defense and the preservation of liberty. The minutemen were massing arms (including cannons), ammunition and supplies for war, and the British were on their way to confiscate them. Before you can subjugate a populace, you have to disarm them. Adolph Hitler understood it. Josef Stalin understood it. King George understood it, and learned the hard way what happens when tyrants encounter free men with liberty in their hearts and guns in their hands.

The third idea I find in the hearts of the patriots is that of liberty - the desire to live a life of freedom. This is not libertine freedom - the freedom to do whatever we want, regardless of what happens to others. Government is given by God to "bear the sword" (Rom 13:4) and punish evildoers, but not to be a source of fear for the law-abiding citizen. Our freedom is the freedom to do what is right, loving God and loving each other without fear of a tyrant telling us what we will do, what we will believe, or what we will think.

Happy Patriot's Day! Wouldn't it be great if it was a national holiday?

No king but King Jesus!