the truth that God, the Creator, is a God of love. It all hangs together perfectly.
And does not the whole course of each human life – the growth in
wisdom and other heavenly attributes that we hope for and expect, and see
people actually achieve – point to the truth that life continues after we leave
this world? Since human beings are so obviously spiritual creatures, with the
potential to grow more heavenly throughout their lives on earth, the whole
world would simply make no sense if there were no heaven.
(WEO)
“a new birth of freedom”
Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is another example of the idea in my
editorial on the birth of the Church – that continuing success and progress
requires a perpetual return to first principles.
In that famous speech, Lincoln spoke of the United States as having been
“conceived in liberty,” and he resolved “that these dead shall not have died in
vain,” but that “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.”
The “first principle” from which the American form of government came,
invoked by Lincoln in his speech, was Liberty. The nation was “conceived in
liberty,” and by hewing to that principle it would, in Lincoln’s immortal words,
“have a new birth of freedom.”
Lincoln’s hope for the future was based on a continuation of “the unfinished
work” which those who fought and died at Gettysburg “so nobly advanced” –
that is, “a new birth” of the very freedom that was “conceived” at the nation’s
founding.
(WEO)
freedom is not free
The saying, “freedom is not free,” is meant to remind us of the soldiers who
have given their lives, and are risking their lives today, in the service of their
country. Theirs is the supreme sacrifice, but the battle to preserve and advance
human liberty is one that engages us all.
Liberty is a gift from God that we must be worthy of receiving. It begins
with love. “All freedom is of love,” the Writings say, repeatedly. Real freedom
– not the kind of license the hells crave – is the exercise of good loves by
enlightened reason.
And what is it that good loves love? They love use; and therefore truth, by
means of which they are able to bring forth uses. And use implies order. (If the
vending machine is “out of order,” that means it is unable to perform its use).
Freedom and order, therefore, go hand in hand; and both depend upon truth.
Human nature, though, before it has been reformed and regenerated by
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