SCRIPTURE: Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and them get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates.Deuteronomy 6:6-9 MSG
QUOTE: “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical [imaginary] idea.” – James Madison, Founding Father, 4th President of the United States
THOUGHT: It’s amazing to me, 245 years after the birth of our nation, to see that the warnings were all there. Did I not read the Constitution? Did I never see the red flags the founders put up practically screaming that liberty cannot survive without virtue, that self-government must prevail for democracy to breathe? Did I hear it and not believe it? Was I so surrounded by the freedom they purchased that I was immune to their stearn words?
Probably.
The rise and fall of nations is really a very old story. Entropy thrives on decay, and decaying memory helps it do its work.
God’s people are called to be students of remembering; anamnesis, the idea of retreiving the past for the sake of the future. That’s why, as literacy in the US declines, memorization is practically non-existent, and parenting and family continue to lose impact and respect, rich values and immutable truths are not passed on to the next generation.
Entropy is the perfect setup for the rewriting of history. When collective memory is lost and/or trampled, fewer voices can rise up to remind us of the truth of who we are. There are plenty of bad actors around happy to fill that void — but may we be a people of anamnesis. A people called to remember, remind others, and teach virtue in the people, as James Madison put it.
PRAYER: Triune God, remind us we are sons and daughters of yours. We are made in your image for something higher and better than the cheapened notion of freedom our culture is preaching. Raise us up to teach, to speak, to write, to preach, to live out the virtue necessary to liberty.
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