Freedom Costs Something

Freedom costs something. I have been told that its price is not negotiable and that it must be paid for in advance. Not only is it not free, it isn’t cheap. It cost time and money, sleepless nights and lonely days, blood, sweat, and limbs. It costs friendships and it makes enemies. It can cost an arm and a leg, an eye and an eye, a tooth and a tooth. People have paid for it with their lives and the lives of others.

Freedom can cost you your freedom. It can cost you your comfort and your home. It can cost you time with your family or a family at all. It can cost the future you planned for yourself in exchange for the future God planned instead. It can be paid for in blood and guts, time and tears, and of course – cold, hard cash.

You can pay at the window – the window of opportunity. You can pay online – the front line, the battle line, the picket line, the voting line, the assembly line, the graduation line, the military induction line, and the funeral procession line. Jesus paid for it on the cross and in hell for three days.

Freedom costs something and somebody’s gotta pay. If not Jesus, then His disciples. If not MLK, then Gandhi. If not Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman, then Viola Luizzo and Heather Heyer. If not Dorie Miller and Audie Murphy, then Joan D’Arc and Martin Luther. If not Cripus Attucks and Paul Revere, then Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks.

The purchase of freedom in this life is never a perpetual ownership, but merely a subscription that has to be renewed from time to time in a never-ending continuum of down payments at various and sundry locations with names like Antietam, Auschwitz, Chancellorsville, Dunkirk, Fallujah, Normandy, Selma, Wittenberg, Wounded Knee, and of course, Golgotha. But these are just the ones we all know. So many of these payment centers are unsung. Nobody talks much about the study hall or the practice field. Nobody talks much about running scales on the piano or laps at the track. Nobody talks about time in the lab or the law library.

Sometimes, you’ve got to pick up the weights to be free. Sometimes, you’ve got to put down the bottle. Sometimes, you have to grab a gun. Sometimes, you have to let go of the past. Sometimes, you’ve got to gain knowledge. Sometimes, you’ve got to lose weight. Sometimes, you’ve got to get off your ass. Sometimes, you’ve got to get down to business. Sometimes you’ve got to speak up. Sometimes, you got to shut up. Sometimes you've got to spit some verse; sometimes, you've got to swallow your pride. Sometimes, you’ve got to stand up to the devil; sometimes, you’ve got to bow down before God.

A freedom payment is due in America. God has allowed us to receive “a bill” in the form of “a Donald” and we will have to pay to be free of him. We are going to have to pay this bill one way or another – at the ballot box or in the bomb shelter; on our praying knees or in a firing line, soup line, or whatever fate awaits a nation of people who refuse to pay the price for truthful, honest leadership with a healthy passion for knowledge and understanding, for love for their neighbors and respect for the foreigners in their midst. We will pay with the sacrifice of our own selfish interests or we will pay for leadership concerned with self alone. The antichrist and Christ Himself are both headed this way. Whose account will we be in good standing with? Which one will we pay, and which one do we believe will free us? I fear we shall soon see.

"Fight the power…fight the power. Fight the power…fight the power. Fight the power…fight the power. Fight the power…we’ve got to fight the power that be" said the noted philosopher Carlton Ridenour. Whatever freedom costs you, pay it. It is worth the price, because you're gonna pay either way.

Freedom costs something. Not having it costs everything.