July 7, 2025 • 16 mins
In this episode, Danny reflects on the themes of courage, faith, and the importance of liberty of conscience through the lens of historical and biblical narratives. He discusses Randy Pausch's last lecture, the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and the significance of religious freedom, emphasizing the need for conviction in the face of adversity.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hey everybody, thanks for checking in.
Hoping everyone had a a good 4thof July.
Some universities ask professorswho are retiring or leaving to
give something called the Last lecture to give some final
thoughts to the faculty and theyusually show up along with the
classroom. And on September 8th, 2001,
Doctor Randy Pausch, computer science professor at Carnegie
(00:22):
Mellon, was asked to do this. His remarks have also been
turned into a book. He began this way.
My dad always taught me when there's an elephant in the room
to introduce them. If you look at my CAT scans,
you'll see about 10 tumors on myliver.
My doctor said I have three to six months to live, and that was
a month ago. So you can do the math.
We have the best doctors in the world, but we can't change this.
(00:45):
We have to decide how to respondto it.
We can't change the cards that I've been dealt.
We just have to play the hand. He didn't want to talk about his
cancer. He hasn't been able really to
talk about the cancer to his family either.
So he made a video and he calledit a message in a bottle that
would be played after his death.It was going to be too
emotional. Instead, for his last lecture,
(01:06):
he talked about his childhood dreams, being in zero gravity or
playing in the NFL, wanting to be Captain Kirk or writing an
article for the World Book Encyclopedia, which again, that
is dating himself. Randy stood there with a clicker
and a PowerPoint with metastasized cancer, talking
about enabling the dreams of other people.
And he died about seven months later.
(01:28):
And one of the things he said tothose in his last lecture was
this. Are you spending your time on
the right things? Because time is all we have.
I came across this photo that was taken in Germany in 1936.
It's a mass of people all doing the Nazi salute and that salute
became the official greeting. And the salute is you hold out
(01:50):
your right arm and you say 2 words which I'm not going to
dignify here. Shortly after the Nazis came to
power, the salute became the official German form of greeting
and by 1934 special courts have been established to punish those
who refuse to perform the saluteand they were put in prison.
You can be intimidated or you could be forced to pay fines.
(02:11):
Despite their punitive effort, some people refused to perform
the salute. One man who was identified in
this photograph was named AugustLynn Messer, and you can find
this online. But he publicly refused to
perform the salute when the Nazis were launching a new Navy
vessel in the shipyard in Hamburg where he worked.
And you can see him standing there with his arms crossed as
(02:34):
everybody else, hundreds are doing the salute.
He was later imprisoned and put in a concentration camp and was
eventually killed. In Daniel Chapter 3.
There is a great story, and it'sa great story anyway, but we
know it's even greater because Veggietales with Rack Shack and
Benny made this popular for the children.
I remember raising my kids on this.
But God's people had been exiledafter the fall of Jerusalem in
(02:57):
587, and they were deported to Babylon.
Religion was very important, andfrom a human perspective, the
God of Israel and they were monotheistic people.
The God of Israel appeared inferior to the other gods
because God's people had been captured by people who
worshipped other gods who were polytheistic.
(03:17):
But as we know from the historical perspective, a God
was not demonstrating weakness but carrying out consequences
for the people who show disobedience.
So people had their land taken, they had their homes taken, they
had their culture taken, and even their names were taken.
They were given new names to help assimilate them into the
(03:39):
culture, and they were having tolearn a different language.
What was left to take from them in their exile?
Daniel chapter 3 is a story about three men who faced a
crisis of conscience but Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego
and the back story is that Nebuchadnezzar had brought young
men with potential from the Exiles to train them, wanted to
(04:01):
get them to learn the the new language, but they wouldn't eat
the King's food even though theywere required to.
And they they went forward with a test to show if you will give
us 10 days, we will demonstrate that we look better than the
ones who are required to eat theKing's food.
So they agreed to do this and the Long story short is that
Daniel and these three others look better and they were not
(04:24):
required to eat the King's food.But from a cultural standpoint,
they had lost a lot of differentthings.
And the king had this dream in chapter 2 that had bothered him.
And he called his advisors together, not only to interpret
the dream, but to tell him the dream that he had.
But he wouldn't tell them what the dream was, so they couldn't
do it. And the king was about to go on
(04:44):
a killing spree until Daniel sent word to him and say, don't
do that. Give me some time to pray and
sort it out. And that's what he did.
Daniel prayed to God and he was given an answer.
So he told Nephic that the king,not only his dream, but the
interpretation of the dream. And the king fell before Daniel
and paid him honor and said this.
And this is significant. Surely your God is the God of
(05:06):
gods and the Lord of kings and revealer of mysteries.
But the very next verse says that Nebuchadnezzar set up a
test of loyalty for his subjectsand those in his administration.
It was a religious and politicaltest.
Even after this had happened with Daniel.
Keep that in mind. The punishment The punishment
for not conforming to this test was severe.
(05:30):
The king built a large golden statue and he required the
people to worship and bow down when they they heard the
musicians play at certain pointsduring the day.
From a practical standpoint, theking was unifying religion,
which is about God, nation, and politics and furthermore, it
also included the law. He made this a law.
(05:50):
The music was the cue to stop what you're doing and bow down
to this intimidating statue. It was a public ceremony and it
was obvious to those who were doing and those who were not
doing it. But there were those who were
jealous of Shadrach, Meshach andAbednego and how they were doing
in the administration. And they reported the three of
them to the king. And the king was trying to be
(06:12):
magnanimous and said, I've heardthat you were not bowing down.
When you hear this music, I'm going to give you a second
chance. If you bow down and worship the
God that I've made, that's good.But if you don't, I'm going to
throw you into the fiery furnace, which we can imagine
would be a terrible way to die. The bottom line is you can
either bow or you can burn. Religious freedom comes to mind.
(06:33):
On this particular holiday weekend, Baptists have been at
the forefront of championing religious freedom.
Roger Williams, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in
America in Providence, RI, said that coerced worship was a
stench in the nostrils of God. Baptists have fought for
religious liberty and the separation of church and state.
Isaac Bacchus, a Baptist and a contemporary of Thomas
(06:57):
Jefferson. They both supported religious
freedom, and Jefferson said thatno religious test should be
required to be passed to be partof the government.
Jefferson was a Deist and a Unitarian, and he was a student
of the Enlightenment, which becomes even more important as
it relates to his views of God and the deity of Christ.
So before for the Trump Bible, we had the Jefferson Bible.
(07:20):
The Trump Bible has been out fora little while.
It's actually called the God Bless the USA Bible.
And you have on the cover of it you have the Holy Bible and then
underneath it you have God blessthe USA.
But inside the the book you havethe King James version of the
Bible. You have a handwritten chorus of
God Bless the USA which was written by Lane Grigwood.
(07:42):
There's a copy of the Constitution and the Bill of
Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of
Allegiance, and you can have them all for the low, low price
of 5999. If there has been a more
blasphemous or idolatrous creation recently, I'm not aware
of it. I can go into a long explanation
of this, but to put it simply toput man made documents on a par
(08:05):
with the infallible word of God is and it is a version of what
we have come to know as Christian nationalism.
But before the the Trump Bible there was the Jefferson Bible.
And I don't know if Jefferson monetized this book or not, but
he called it the life and moralsof Jesus of Nazareth.
And Jefferson with his enlightenment thinking kept the
(08:27):
moral teachings of Jesus, but hecut out the miracles and the
references to deity. But despite doing these things,
Jefferson championed the separation of church and state
and religious freedom. In 1802, he wrote a letter to
the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut, where he
emphasized the wall of separation.
(08:49):
Borrowing a metaphor that Roger Williams had made about the wall
of separation between the gardenof the church and the wilderness
of the world, this letter was anaffirmation of Congress's
passing the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment in
particular in 1791 the First Amendment Congress shall make no
law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the
(09:11):
free exercise thereof. In the book for Fragile
Freedoms, one of my my favorite books ever written by Walter
Sheridan, The Definition of Religious Freedom is the
historic Baptist affirmation of the freedom of religion, freedom
for religion and Freedom from religion, insisting that Caesar
is not Christ and Christ is not Caesar.
(09:35):
And just as a reminder that the colonists came to the New World
protesting the state church in England in looking for the
freedom of worship and to illustrate and emphasize the
theme that faith must be free. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
did not have a First Amendment or the separation of church and
state or really a church at all during that time.
(09:56):
But the king had merged his religion, politics and
government into a law requiring forced worship.
And to bow down. And if you don't burn it was a
test of loyalty. These three men had been forced
off their land and away from their homes and had their
culture taken away. They were learning a new
language. They were taken away from their
(10:17):
temple. And now the question is, were
they willing to have their worship of God taken away?
They were willing to pay the price to keep their liberty of
conscience. They literally faced the music.
And they didn't hit a conference.
They didn't beg for their lives.They didn't spend time defending
themselves. And he essentially told the king
after he had said that no one can deliver you from my hand,
(10:40):
the three of them said to him that our God is able to deliver
us from your hand. But even if not that impressive
and important disclaimer, even if not, we won't bow down to
your gods or serve them. So I was thinking about this.
What were they doing? And this is a form, or maybe an
earliest form of what we would call civil disobedience because
(11:04):
they were breaking the law for aprinciple.
And that principle could be called freedom of conscience.
Charles de Weese has written a pamphlet, and these pamphlets
are about 20 plus years old. It's called the Baptist style
for a new century. And this one is called liberty
of conscience. And this is what de Weese has
has indicated. What will Baptist do with this
(11:24):
conviction in the 2000s? A decisive response in its favor
is imperative if Baptist intend to stay true to the liberating
message and claims of Christ. Roger Williams claimed in 16, 44
that Christ is king alone over conscience is the sum of all
true preaching. Every Baptist minister who
occupies A pulpit ought to preach liberty of conscience
(11:44):
under Christ with vigor and frequency.
Advocating liberty of consciencebelongs to Baptist lay persons
too. Liberty of conscience is God's
gift to humanity. God urges individuals to
exercise that gift under the leadership of the Holy Spirit
and the Lordship of Christ. Applied fully, liberty of
conscience brings out the best of what it means to be created
(12:05):
in God's image. Put simply, every individual is
responsible not only to God in matters of conscience, not to
the state, not to the church, not to creedal statements, not
to pastors, not disseminated presidents, not to
denominational leaders, not evento one another.
True faith is voluntary. Getting back to the story, this
is an important part of the story, maybe the most important
(12:28):
part. They had confidence in God, but
they didn't have confidence in the outcome.
They made the disclaimer even ifnot, we would rather burn than
bow to that idol. Now we all know the ending of
the story and we want to get to the part about them being thrown
into the fire. And it's important to note that
they were not spared the fire, but the part about them, they're
being thrown into the the fiery furnace.
(12:50):
And then the 4th man in the fireand how they were delivered.
And they, they came out smokeless, so to speak.
And they were promoted and the king declared that their God is
the real God. We could talk about why bad
things happen to good people, which the story could be about
in a way, and how the real God really showed up.
And we could talk about why theywere in exile and why does God
(13:10):
allow that to happen. And the people were thinking
that Babylon's gods were greaterthan the God of Israel.
We could jump to the end of the story, which is amazing.
But let's pause for a moment andnot minimize the courage of
their convictions because they really didn't know how this was
going to turn out. Where was their confidence?
It wasn't transactional for these three men.
(13:31):
This was a hill to die on. And in looking to the story, we
could say, what's the big deal? Everyone else was doing it.
Everyone else was bowing down when they heard the music.
They could simply blend in. What other choice could you
have? And what the three of them
showed is that there is a choice.
And when you deal with people who are willing to die for their
convictions and liberty of conscience, the only thing that
(13:53):
you can really do is kill them. John Lewis, the late civil
rights leader, said this. Do not get lost in a sea of
despair. Be hopeful, optimistic.
Our struggle is not the struggleof a day, a week, a month, or a
year, just the struggle of a lifetime.
Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in trouble,
(14:13):
good trouble, necessary trouble.The blood of the martyrs is the
seed of the Church, and we as the Church are here because of
those who have gone before us, those who have fought and bled
and died for the liberties we enjoy and practice and take for
granted. Freedom of worship is at the top
of that list of freedoms for me.Walter Sheridan in the book I
(14:34):
mentioned a moment ago the four fragile freedoms.
The freedoms are the freedom of the Bible, soul, church, and
religious freedom. Religious freedom is the
historic Baptist affirmation of freedom of religion, freedom for
religion, freedom from religion,insisting that Caesar is not
Christ and Christ is not Caesar.The separation of church and
state is a pivotal Baptist principle influential in our
(14:57):
country today. And yet there are threats to
this important distinctive. Sheridan writes.
Christians have to work hard at distinguishing between pietism
and patriotism, assessing critically where one begins and
the other ends. When the cross of Jesus is
wrapped in the flag of any nation, danger, if not downright
heresy, is nearby. We just celebrated the 4th of
(15:19):
July, and next year we're scheduled to celebrate the
250th. But in referencing Shadrach,
Neshach and Abednego and being reminded that these were not
their real names, they were given new names to assimilate
into a new land and a way of life, and they were being forced
to take on the gods and images of the king.
But that was in a hill that theywere willing to die on.
(15:42):
I'm grateful for those early Baptists and framers of the
Constitution and the First Amendment in particular, and for
the Establishment Clause and theFree Exercise Clause.
I'm grateful for our liberty of conscience.
Jesus said if the sun has set you free, you shall be free
indeed. Thanks for listening.
Hey everybody, thanks for checking in.
Hoping everyone had a a good 4thof July.
Some universities ask professorswho are retiring or leaving to
give something called the Last lecture to give some final
thoughts to the faculty and theyusually show up along with the
classroom. And on September 8th, 2001,
Doctor Randy Pausch, computer science professor at Carnegie
(00:22):
Mellon, was asked to do this. His remarks have also been
turned into a book. He began this way.
My dad always taught me when there's an elephant in the room
to introduce them. If you look at my CAT scans,
you'll see about 10 tumors on myliver.
My doctor said I have three to six months to live, and that was
a month ago. So you can do the math.
We have the best doctors in the world, but we can't change this.
(00:45):
We have to decide how to respondto it.
We can't change the cards that I've been dealt.
We just have to play the hand. He didn't want to talk about his
cancer. He hasn't been able really to
talk about the cancer to his family either.
So he made a video and he calledit a message in a bottle that
would be played after his death.It was going to be too
emotional. Instead, for his last lecture,
(01:06):
he talked about his childhood dreams, being in zero gravity or
playing in the NFL, wanting to be Captain Kirk or writing an
article for the World Book Encyclopedia, which again, that
is dating himself. Randy stood there with a clicker
and a PowerPoint with metastasized cancer, talking
about enabling the dreams of other people.
And he died about seven months later.
(01:28):
And one of the things he said tothose in his last lecture was
this. Are you spending your time on
the right things? Because time is all we have.
I came across this photo that was taken in Germany in 1936.
It's a mass of people all doing the Nazi salute and that salute
became the official greeting. And the salute is you hold out
(01:50):
your right arm and you say 2 words which I'm not going to
dignify here. Shortly after the Nazis came to
power, the salute became the official German form of greeting
and by 1934 special courts have been established to punish those
who refuse to perform the saluteand they were put in prison.
You can be intimidated or you could be forced to pay fines.
(02:11):
Despite their punitive effort, some people refused to perform
the salute. One man who was identified in
this photograph was named AugustLynn Messer, and you can find
this online. But he publicly refused to
perform the salute when the Nazis were launching a new Navy
vessel in the shipyard in Hamburg where he worked.
And you can see him standing there with his arms crossed as
(02:34):
everybody else, hundreds are doing the salute.
He was later imprisoned and put in a concentration camp and was
eventually killed. In Daniel Chapter 3.
There is a great story, and it'sa great story anyway, but we
know it's even greater because Veggietales with Rack Shack and
Benny made this popular for the children.
I remember raising my kids on this.
But God's people had been exiledafter the fall of Jerusalem in
(02:57):
587, and they were deported to Babylon.
Religion was very important, andfrom a human perspective, the
God of Israel and they were monotheistic people.
The God of Israel appeared inferior to the other gods
because God's people had been captured by people who
worshipped other gods who were polytheistic.
(03:17):
But as we know from the historical perspective, a God
was not demonstrating weakness but carrying out consequences
for the people who show disobedience.
So people had their land taken, they had their homes taken, they
had their culture taken, and even their names were taken.
They were given new names to help assimilate them into the
(03:39):
culture, and they were having tolearn a different language.
What was left to take from them in their exile?
Daniel chapter 3 is a story about three men who faced a
crisis of conscience but Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego
and the back story is that Nebuchadnezzar had brought young
men with potential from the Exiles to train them, wanted to
(04:01):
get them to learn the the new language, but they wouldn't eat
the King's food even though theywere required to.
And they they went forward with a test to show if you will give
us 10 days, we will demonstrate that we look better than the
ones who are required to eat theKing's food.
So they agreed to do this and the Long story short is that
Daniel and these three others look better and they were not
(04:24):
required to eat the King's food.But from a cultural standpoint,
they had lost a lot of differentthings.
And the king had this dream in chapter 2 that had bothered him.
And he called his advisors together, not only to interpret
the dream, but to tell him the dream that he had.
But he wouldn't tell them what the dream was, so they couldn't
do it. And the king was about to go on
(04:44):
a killing spree until Daniel sent word to him and say, don't
do that. Give me some time to pray and
sort it out. And that's what he did.
Daniel prayed to God and he was given an answer.
So he told Nephic that the king,not only his dream, but the
interpretation of the dream. And the king fell before Daniel
and paid him honor and said this.
And this is significant. Surely your God is the God of
(05:06):
gods and the Lord of kings and revealer of mysteries.
But the very next verse says that Nebuchadnezzar set up a
test of loyalty for his subjectsand those in his administration.
It was a religious and politicaltest.
Even after this had happened with Daniel.
Keep that in mind. The punishment The punishment
for not conforming to this test was severe.
(05:30):
The king built a large golden statue and he required the
people to worship and bow down when they they heard the
musicians play at certain pointsduring the day.
From a practical standpoint, theking was unifying religion,
which is about God, nation, and politics and furthermore, it
also included the law. He made this a law.
(05:50):
The music was the cue to stop what you're doing and bow down
to this intimidating statue. It was a public ceremony and it
was obvious to those who were doing and those who were not
doing it. But there were those who were
jealous of Shadrach, Meshach andAbednego and how they were doing
in the administration. And they reported the three of
them to the king. And the king was trying to be
(06:12):
magnanimous and said, I've heardthat you were not bowing down.
When you hear this music, I'm going to give you a second
chance. If you bow down and worship the
God that I've made, that's good.But if you don't, I'm going to
throw you into the fiery furnace, which we can imagine
would be a terrible way to die. The bottom line is you can
either bow or you can burn. Religious freedom comes to mind.
(06:33):
On this particular holiday weekend, Baptists have been at
the forefront of championing religious freedom.
Roger Williams, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in
America in Providence, RI, said that coerced worship was a
stench in the nostrils of God. Baptists have fought for
religious liberty and the separation of church and state.
Isaac Bacchus, a Baptist and a contemporary of Thomas
(06:57):
Jefferson. They both supported religious
freedom, and Jefferson said thatno religious test should be
required to be passed to be partof the government.
Jefferson was a Deist and a Unitarian, and he was a student
of the Enlightenment, which becomes even more important as
it relates to his views of God and the deity of Christ.
So before for the Trump Bible, we had the Jefferson Bible.
(07:20):
The Trump Bible has been out fora little while.
It's actually called the God Bless the USA Bible.
And you have on the cover of it you have the Holy Bible and then
underneath it you have God blessthe USA.
But inside the the book you havethe King James version of the
Bible. You have a handwritten chorus of
God Bless the USA which was written by Lane Grigwood.
(07:42):
There's a copy of the Constitution and the Bill of
Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of
Allegiance, and you can have them all for the low, low price
of 5999. If there has been a more
blasphemous or idolatrous creation recently, I'm not aware
of it. I can go into a long explanation
of this, but to put it simply toput man made documents on a par
(08:05):
with the infallible word of God is and it is a version of what
we have come to know as Christian nationalism.
But before the the Trump Bible there was the Jefferson Bible.
And I don't know if Jefferson monetized this book or not, but
he called it the life and moralsof Jesus of Nazareth.
And Jefferson with his enlightenment thinking kept the
(08:27):
moral teachings of Jesus, but hecut out the miracles and the
references to deity. But despite doing these things,
Jefferson championed the separation of church and state
and religious freedom. In 1802, he wrote a letter to
the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut, where he
emphasized the wall of separation.
(08:49):
Borrowing a metaphor that Roger Williams had made about the wall
of separation between the gardenof the church and the wilderness
of the world, this letter was anaffirmation of Congress's
passing the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment in
particular in 1791 the First Amendment Congress shall make no
law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the
(09:11):
free exercise thereof. In the book for Fragile
Freedoms, one of my my favorite books ever written by Walter
Sheridan, The Definition of Religious Freedom is the
historic Baptist affirmation of the freedom of religion, freedom
for religion and Freedom from religion, insisting that Caesar
is not Christ and Christ is not Caesar.
(09:35):
And just as a reminder that the colonists came to the New World
protesting the state church in England in looking for the
freedom of worship and to illustrate and emphasize the
theme that faith must be free. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
did not have a First Amendment or the separation of church and
state or really a church at all during that time.
(09:56):
But the king had merged his religion, politics and
government into a law requiring forced worship.
And to bow down. And if you don't burn it was a
test of loyalty. These three men had been forced
off their land and away from their homes and had their
culture taken away. They were learning a new
language. They were taken away from their
(10:17):
temple. And now the question is, were
they willing to have their worship of God taken away?
They were willing to pay the price to keep their liberty of
conscience. They literally faced the music.
And they didn't hit a conference.
They didn't beg for their lives.They didn't spend time defending
themselves. And he essentially told the king
after he had said that no one can deliver you from my hand,
(10:40):
the three of them said to him that our God is able to deliver
us from your hand. But even if not that impressive
and important disclaimer, even if not, we won't bow down to
your gods or serve them. So I was thinking about this.
What were they doing? And this is a form, or maybe an
earliest form of what we would call civil disobedience because
(11:04):
they were breaking the law for aprinciple.
And that principle could be called freedom of conscience.
Charles de Weese has written a pamphlet, and these pamphlets
are about 20 plus years old. It's called the Baptist style
for a new century. And this one is called liberty
of conscience. And this is what de Weese has
has indicated. What will Baptist do with this
(11:24):
conviction in the 2000s? A decisive response in its favor
is imperative if Baptist intend to stay true to the liberating
message and claims of Christ. Roger Williams claimed in 16, 44
that Christ is king alone over conscience is the sum of all
true preaching. Every Baptist minister who
occupies A pulpit ought to preach liberty of conscience
(11:44):
under Christ with vigor and frequency.
Advocating liberty of consciencebelongs to Baptist lay persons
too. Liberty of conscience is God's
gift to humanity. God urges individuals to
exercise that gift under the leadership of the Holy Spirit
and the Lordship of Christ. Applied fully, liberty of
conscience brings out the best of what it means to be created
(12:05):
in God's image. Put simply, every individual is
responsible not only to God in matters of conscience, not to
the state, not to the church, not to creedal statements, not
to pastors, not disseminated presidents, not to
denominational leaders, not evento one another.
True faith is voluntary. Getting back to the story, this
is an important part of the story, maybe the most important
(12:28):
part. They had confidence in God, but
they didn't have confidence in the outcome.
They made the disclaimer even ifnot, we would rather burn than
bow to that idol. Now we all know the ending of
the story and we want to get to the part about them being thrown
into the fire. And it's important to note that
they were not spared the fire, but the part about them, they're
being thrown into the the fiery furnace.
(12:50):
And then the 4th man in the fireand how they were delivered.
And they, they came out smokeless, so to speak.
And they were promoted and the king declared that their God is
the real God. We could talk about why bad
things happen to good people, which the story could be about
in a way, and how the real God really showed up.
And we could talk about why theywere in exile and why does God
(13:10):
allow that to happen. And the people were thinking
that Babylon's gods were greaterthan the God of Israel.
We could jump to the end of the story, which is amazing.
But let's pause for a moment andnot minimize the courage of
their convictions because they really didn't know how this was
going to turn out. Where was their confidence?
It wasn't transactional for these three men.
(13:31):
This was a hill to die on. And in looking to the story, we
could say, what's the big deal? Everyone else was doing it.
Everyone else was bowing down when they heard the music.
They could simply blend in. What other choice could you
have? And what the three of them
showed is that there is a choice.
And when you deal with people who are willing to die for their
convictions and liberty of conscience, the only thing that
(13:53):
you can really do is kill them. John Lewis, the late civil
rights leader, said this. Do not get lost in a sea of
despair. Be hopeful, optimistic.
Our struggle is not the struggleof a day, a week, a month, or a
year, just the struggle of a lifetime.
Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in trouble,
(14:13):
good trouble, necessary trouble.The blood of the martyrs is the
seed of the Church, and we as the Church are here because of
those who have gone before us, those who have fought and bled
and died for the liberties we enjoy and practice and take for
granted. Freedom of worship is at the top
of that list of freedoms for me.Walter Sheridan in the book I
(14:34):
mentioned a moment ago the four fragile freedoms.
The freedoms are the freedom of the Bible, soul, church, and
religious freedom. Religious freedom is the
historic Baptist affirmation of freedom of religion, freedom for
religion, freedom from religion,insisting that Caesar is not
Christ and Christ is not Caesar.The separation of church and
state is a pivotal Baptist principle influential in our
(14:57):
country today. And yet there are threats to
this important distinctive. Sheridan writes.
Christians have to work hard at distinguishing between pietism
and patriotism, assessing critically where one begins and
the other ends. When the cross of Jesus is
wrapped in the flag of any nation, danger, if not downright
heresy, is nearby. We just celebrated the 4th of
(15:19):
July, and next year we're scheduled to celebrate the
250th. But in referencing Shadrach,
Neshach and Abednego and being reminded that these were not
their real names, they were given new names to assimilate
into a new land and a way of life, and they were being forced
to take on the gods and images of the king.
But that was in a hill that theywere willing to die on.
(15:42):
I'm grateful for those early Baptists and framers of the
Constitution and the First Amendment in particular, and for
the Establishment Clause and theFree Exercise Clause.
I'm grateful for our liberty of conscience.
Jesus said if the sun has set you free, you shall be free
indeed. Thanks for listening.
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