I sat watching my recorded session of “Meet The Press”. I had a tear in my eye. 20 years ago, the Berlin Wall came down and freedom was returned to East Germany. It was a great sight to watch again how the people from both sides of the Wall celebrated its destruction. Hammers, picks, screwdrivers, you name it, were used to do away with one of the most brutal symbols of evil in our lifetime.
Then a horrible realization crept into my heart – the more freedom people have, the more complacent they become. Nowhere is this truth more pronounced than in our faith. It seems the more freedom people have, the less they understand the importance of their faith and begin to take it for granted. But bring in persecution, as we have seen around the world (take the Mao regime for example), and the more faith people begin to exhibit.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, called it cheap grace – grace which is presumed upon, taken for granted, and in the worse cases, spit upon.
God help us Americans not to take either our freedom or our faith for granted. Both are precious and both should be worth giving our all.
Question: How do you keep from allowing your freedom to make you complacent? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.
The Horrible Irony – Freedom Equals Complacency
I sat watching my recorded session of “Meet The Press”. I had a tear in my eye. 20 years ago, the Berlin Wall came down and freedom was returned to East Germany. It was a great sight to watch again how the people from both sides of the Wall celebrated its destruction. Hammers, picks, screwdrivers, you name it, were used to do away with one of the most brutal symbols of evil in our lifetime.
Then a horrible realization crept into my heart – the more freedom people have, the more complacent they become. Nowhere is this truth more pronounced than in our faith. It seems the more freedom people have, the less they understand the importance of their faith and begin to take it for granted. But bring in persecution, as we have seen around the world (take the Mao regime for example), and the more faith people begin to exhibit.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, called it cheap grace – grace which is presumed upon, taken for granted, and in the worse cases, spit upon.
God help us Americans not to take either our freedom or our faith for granted. Both are precious and both should be worth giving our all.
Question: How do you keep from allowing your freedom to make you complacent? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.
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