The idea of freedom is not absent from the Holy Scriptures.  Their approach to it is unique, however.  It is not an absolute value; it is always hedged about with various limitations.  The Holy Apostle Peter’s First Epistle to the Christians in Asia Minor provides a good example of this.  He writes,

Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God (I Peter 3:11-16).

This is not quite what we have ended up with in the United States.  Christianity has always been present amongst us, but so too have other influences, some of them outright pagan, as Christopher Ferrara shows in his indispensable book Liberty: The God That Failed:

After 1770, writes Albanese, “songs began to appear which celebrated the Goddess [of Liberty]” and “preachers took up the cause of the Goddess in their turn.”  For example, Jacob Duché, the Chaplain to the Continental Congress who delivered its opening prayer, gave a sermon explaining how Liberty “true to her divine source, is of heavenly abstraction” and that both Liberty and the “divine virtue” which is her “illustrious parent” come to dwell “in the hearts of all intelligent beings” where “they ought jointly to be worshipped.”

The sign and sacrament of this veritable cult of the Goddess Liberty was the Liberty Tree in Boston . . . .  As Oliver’s brother wrote, Liberty Tree had been “consecrated as an idol for the mob to worship” and was the place for imposing the discipline of the “Tree of Ordeal [on those] whom the Rioters pitched upon as State delinquents.”  In addition to being both a totem and locus of the power of Liberty, Liberty Tree was a place of worship where revolutionary liturgies were enacted.  In Providence, Rhode Island a Liberty Tree was dedicated during a ceremony in which the participants laid their hands on the sacred object as a local minister invoked the worldwide unity of a kind of mystical body of Liberty . . . .

The “sacred elm,” writes Albanese, became “a kind of transcendent cosmo-historical tree around which the other Liberty Trees and liberty signs of the colonies took root . . . Like the sacrament it was, Liberty Tree was the reality which oriented the patriots, yet it pointed beyond itself to another source of power”—the power invoked by Paine with his talk of remaking the world and regenerating man in a disquieting analogy to the working of divine grace (Tacoma, Wash., Angelico Press, 2012, pgs. 150-1).

A group of Yankee Christians known as the National Reform Association saw clearly the spiritual battle between Christianity and heathenism that has been waged since the early days of the newly-independent States:

Even more explicitly prophetic was the President of Wheaton College, Prof. Charles Blanchard, whose address to the 1874 convention [of the NRA—W.G.], entitled “The Conflict of Law,” predicted that, failing adoption of the proposed Christian Amendment, no state law favorable to Christianity “can stand a suit in the Supreme Court of the United States. . . .  This conflict of law is inevitable and irrepressible.  Our laws will be heathenized or our Constitution Christianized, and Americans must soon decide which they will have done.”  In like manner, Felix Brunot’s address warned that while “Our nation is Christian . . . the Constitution is unchristian. . . .  Can this anomaly continue?  Impossible.  One by one your Christian laws . . . and all the Christian features of State Constitutions, must come to the test of the Constitution of the United States; and they must fall before it.”

. . . Under the influence of the Godless Constitution as wielded by anti-Christian forces, predicted Tayler Lewis, it would not be long before “our whole political page becomes a pure, unbelieving, irreligious, Christless, Godless blank” (Ibid., pgs. 533-4, 535).

It is clear which side has won in this battle, as the States have been scrubbed of most everything overtly Christian in public spaces.  Even federal Supreme Court cases that conservatives have cheered, like Dobbs v Jackson, make no mention of Christianity at all (which makes the victories doubtful over the long run).

Thus, instead of the Christian idea of limited freedom directed toward virtuous ends (and ultimately to union with God Himself), we have the Luciferian-Promethean idea of unlimited freedom.  Examples –

Many scientists believe they are free to manipulate human genetics with mRNA injections without negative repercussions:

“Potentially more worrisome, however, would be if the problem is tied to a cumulative effect from multiple mRNA shots,” Science reported.¹⁴ It’s important to point out that while all HIV mRNA shots have failed, we’re to believe COVID-19 mRNA shots passed safety and efficacy studies with flying colors and the technology is thereby “proven” safe and effective.

But as noted by Canadian oncologist and cancer researcher Dr. William Makis, “The more mRNA shots you take, the greater the immune system damage, the greater your risk of impaired cancer surveillance and hence, the greater your risk of turbo cancer.”¹⁵

Turbo cancers is a term used to describe the emergence of rapid-growing cancers in people, many under age 30, who have received one or more COVID jabs — another warning that mRNA shots aren’t as safe as we’ve been led to believe.

Men and women believe they are at liberty to change their sex through drugs and surgery, and the federal government thinks it should help them along the way:

Title IX was created to protect women and girls from discrimination and abuse. Today, the Biden administration removed the protection and replaced it with a rule against prejudice “based on stereotypes, orientation, identity, sex characteristics.” Under this new rule, elementary schools will LOSE funding if they tell parents that their 6-year-old uses different pronouns at school, wants to transition, etc.

Others, who are inclined toward violence, believe they have the freedom to kill as many people as they are able, whether babies in the womb or grown adults (thanks to Nathan Koenig at The Hayride for sharing this story):

The New Orleans Police Department is investigating a mass shooting that happened outside a nightclub in the Warehouse District Sunday night. The shooting killed one woman and injured 11 others just before midnight. Family confirmed that Jezreel Poleate, 24 was shot and killed during the shooting. Those injured included six women and five men, according to police.

The trans issue, to make a brief side trot, is one that conservatives need to be especially cautious about.  The winds are blowing favorably in their direction currently, but there are reasons for concern (via the Title IX article linked above):

A majority of Americans believe a person’s gender is determined at birth and support some restrictions on gender-affirming care for young people — but they also oppose discrimination against transgender people, according to a new poll.

But the political debate around these issues, with Republicans pushing anti-trans legislation, has made some Americans more conservative, reports The Washington Post, which conducted the poll along with KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“You have a big swath of the American public still trying to make sense of this issue,” Patrick Egan, a scholar of American politics and public opinion at New York University, told the Post. “This is a battle and a debate that is unfolding in real time before our eyes, and we don’t know how it’s going to turn out.”

In the Post-KFF poll, conducted November 10 through December 1, 57 percent of respondents said a person’s gender can’t differ from what was assigned at birth, while 43 percent said it can.

That is a substantial minority, 43%, that persists in believing in trans rights.  And, all it takes is one federal Supreme Court case to undo the revivalist momentum (though this wouldn’t be as much of a problem if the States would act like the sovereign entities that they are).  Does anyone remember the State by State victories in favor of traditional Christian marriage in the early 2000s?  Even looney California passed such a constitutional amendment via popular Statewide referendum, Proposition 8, in 2008, by a 52-48 margin.  But along came Obergefell v Hodges in 2015 and swept all that away; now 71% of people in the US say they support homosexual marriage.  As the Yankees cited above foresaw, this sort of ruling is the inevitable outcome of a society whose foundational laws are not rooted explicitly in Christianity.

We clearly need a paradigm shift here in the States, away from the non-Christian freedom of our Enlightenment-influenced constitutions and declarations – so well annunciated by Ol’ Abe Lincoln himself:  ‘You can have anything you want if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.’  (For more on Mr. Lincoln as a dangerous Revolutionary, read essays by the excellent Southern writer Mel Bradford about him).  – and back toward the limited sort of Christian liberty described by the Holy Apostles and found in the lives of the saints who followed after them in Church history.

The Christian tradition of humility, of seeking and accepting the will of God rather than following our own whims, which we noted in the opening, is set out well for us also by the Holy Apostle James in his letter addressed to Christians:

From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. . . . Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil (James 4:1-7, 13-16).

The contrast with the raw, maximal human will of Lincoln and the anti-Christian liberty tradition in the States he represents is stark.  And the contrast grows greater in the life of St. Theodore (+610) of Sykeon, a city in Asia Minor.  We see it illustrated in the life of his mother (it is also noteworthy in this passage that we are given evidence that the saints are not simply dead figures in the past but living men and women who intercede in the present in our lives for our salvation):

When the boy reached the age of six, his mother presented him with a golden belt, since she wanted her son to become a soldier. That night the Holy Great Martyr George (April 23) appeared to Maria in a dream, and he told her not to seek a military career for her son, because the boy was destined to serve God.

. . . At this time [when he was ten—W.G.] the Great Martyr George began appearing to him at night, and also leading him to his own temple to pray until morning. His mother, fearing the dangers of the forest, urged her son not to go out at night.

Once, when the boy had already left, Maria followed him to the church, dragged him out by his hair, and tied him to his bed. That very night Saint George appeared to her in a dream, and commanded her not to hinder the child from going to church. Both Elpidίa and Despoinίa had the same vision. It was then that the women recognized Saint Theodore’s special calling, and they hindered him no longer.

We see the contrast in St. Theodore’s actions as well:

When he was twelve years old, the Saint had a dream in which he saw Christ on the Throne of Glory, Who told him, “Struggle, Theodore, so that you may obtain a perfect reward in the Kingdom of Heaven.” From that time, Saint Theodore began to intensify his labors. He spent both the First Week of Great Lent and the Week of the Veneration of the Cross in complete silence.

. . . Saint Theodore fled human glory and withdrew into complete solitude. Under a large boulder not far from the church of Saint George, he dug a cave and persuaded a certain deacon to cover the entrance with earth, leaving a small opening for air. The deacon brought him bread and water, but he told no one where the Saint had hidden himself. For two years Saint Theodore lived in seclusion and complete quietude.

. . . Saint Theodore continued his strenuous ascetical labors. At his request a blacksmith made him an iron cage without a roof, so narrow that it was scarcely possible to stand. In this cage Saint Theodore wore heavy chains from Holy Pascha until the Nativity of Christ. From the Baptism of the Lord until Holy Pascha he secluded himself in his cave, from which he emerged only for Church Services on Saturdays and Sundays. Throughout the forty-day Fast the Saint ate only greens and bread on Saturdays and Sundays.

And just as St. James teaches, after voluntary humility and self-emptying, God raises him up:

News of the young man’s exploits reached the local Bishop Theodosios, who ordained him to the diaconate, and later to the holy priesthood, even though the Saint was just seventeen years old.

. . . The ascetical life of the young Hieromonk attracted people who were seeking salvation. The Saint tonsured the young man Epiphánios, and later on a pious woman, whom the Saint healed of her sickness, brought her son Philoúmenos to him. Then the virtuous young man John also came to him. Thus, the brethren gradually gathered around the Saint.

. . . Living in such a manner, he received from the Lord the power over wild animals. Bears and wolves came to him and took food from his hand. By the Saint’s prayers, those afflicted with leprosy were healed, and demons were cast out from entire districts. In the nearby village of Magatia, when locusts threatened the crops, people turned to Saint Theodore for help. He told them to go to the church. After he served the Divine Liturgy for them, the villagers returned home and learned that all the locusts had died during the Service.

At that time, the Bishop of Anastasiopolis reposed. The people of the city asked Metropolitan Paul of Ancyra to install Saint Theodore as their bishop. So that the Saint would not resist, the Metropolitan’s messengers and the people of Anastasiopolis dragged him out of his cell by force and carried him into the city. As a Hierarch, Saint Theodore labored much for the welfare of the Church . . . .

. . . Saint Theodore was venerated as a Saint, even during his lifetime. His sanctity was so evident that when he offered the Eucharist, the grace of the Holy Spirit appeared as a radiant purple light, shining on the Holy Gifts. Once, when the Saint elevated the diskos with the Holy Lamb and said: “Holy things are for the holy,” the Holy Lamb floated up in the air, and then settled upon the diskos once more.

We are reaching the extremities of prideful, man-centered liberty here in the States, where we flout the commands of God at nearly every opportunity, disfiguring the beauty of His creation.  But the life of St. Theodore shows the glorious path of Christian liberty that ought to be our focus, the wonderful accomplishments that can be achieved in this life through extreme love for God.  Much repentance from all of society will be needed to experience the latter to even a small degree, including the re-thinking and re-writing of our secularizing constitutions.  And with WW3 perilously near, our repentance is overdue.