The Freedoms' Protections

I heard it said more than once and have said it myself, "The church would be perfect it weren't for all these people."  Laughing at that remark is a sign of health, by the way.   Interestingly it hangs on an assumption that there can be such a thing as church without its "constituating" people.

Certainly the church lives with lots of objects or artifacts that would still remain if all the members were removed.  The Bible itself is chief among those "artifacts."  There has been a centuries' long debate about it.

It's sort of a "chicken or egg" question.  Is scripture -- and in our case that is the Bible -- a product of what we now call the Church?  Or does scripture have a priority -- we call it inspired for a reason -- that when read and "obeyed" produces a community of faith.  

No matter where you might stand on that question, tomorrow waits on both scripture and its readers to decide how to live through faith with one another.  If we fail to live with one another then scripture is subject to our individual idiosyncrasies.  To each his/her own.  If we leave it behind then our shared faithfulness -- no matter how earnest -- has no standard.  Think Amos' "plumbline."

The same can be said of our First Amendment freedoms.  The protections of free exercise, speech, press, assembly, and petition wait on our practice of those very freedoms.  Otherwise what good is the amendment itself?  

Yes we credit -- and rightfully so -- our brave men and women who have defended those freedoms but we could undo all with which we honor them by failing to practice the freedoms ourselves.  It is the practice itself that ratifies the amendment.  

Artifact or inspiration, scripture waits.  And does so because God is a God of love and love cannot coerce and still be love.   

God has taken and is taking a great risk in "the Church" and especially in the people upon whom God waits, to practice love.  Our Constitution also takes a risk in its people. 

Because freedom also cannot be coerced, the First Amendment waits. 

It follows for me that our church, made of its people, is well suited for participating in that practice that protects those freedoms in our Bill of Rights.   We are called to join in civic/civil discourse just like we are called to love.  Indeed that is when the people of the church are at their best, when we speak the truth in love. (Ephesians 4:15)

Let's not wait ourselves and risk the loss of love or our precious freedoms.  Let's breathe, listen, speak then breathe again.  Beseeching our God of love to guide us so that our practice remains free and helps in making a "more perfect union."