Freedom and the Law (Part 1):Introduction

I recently read one of the most irresponsible statements man has ever uttered:

“In a truly Free Country anybody could do what ever they damned well wanted to do with out any form of limitations whatsoever!”

This statement does nothing less than exalt man to the status of a god and then condemns him to the worse kind of bondage and misery – It is the mantra of Humanism.

This is not a new sentiment however. It is as old as man himself. It has been Satan’s strategy from the very beginning, a strategy which encourages man to ignore the infallible Word of God, and to become his own authority and source for truth. This is what Eve did in the Garden of Eden when she no longer accepted God’s word as truth and decided to determine good and evil for herself (Gen. 3:1-6). It is this kind of corrupt thinking that leads man to make statements like the mantra above. When man ignores God, he begins to believe that he can “have a meaningful and proper understanding of reality apart from God’s revelation,” which is unsustainable and unsupportable.¹ Why is it unsustainable and unsupportable? Read the words of Paul to the philosophers at Areopagus in Athens, Greece:

"The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; 26 and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, 27 that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and exist." (NASB, Acts 17:24-28a)

Whether individual or nation, "we live and move and exit" in Him and he created us to seek Him.

It does not take much to show this mantra as what it is, foolishness. It only takes one pedophile to molest one of the mantra’s author’s children to send his worldview into a tailspin. It only takes one rapist to attack his wife or daughter, to show how ridicules this statement truly is. It only takes one person to decide to murder the author of the above statement to completely shatter his delusion.

The Land of Boobies
According to Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, the word “booby” has the following meanings: “a dunce or idiot,” “a buffoon,” “a stupid fellow,” “one void of wisdom, or intellect.”

If you are familiar with the original story of Pinocchio (not Disney’s version) by Carlo Collodi, you will remember that the “Land of Boobies” was the place where Pinocchio and his friend Candlewick, a confirmed rogue, joined multitudes of other disobedient and lazy boys to live a life without rules or authority where they can spend their days in “play and amusement from morning till night.”² In other words, to quote the mantra above, Pinocchio went to live in a land where “anybody could do what ever they damned well wanted to do with out any form of limitations whatsoever.” If we followed the same path, we would transform our once great Country from the “Land of the Free” to the “Land of the Idiots” and its people would, like Pinocchio, all turn into proverbial asses. For when “these poor deluded boys, from continual play and no study had become so many little donkeys, he [the little man who brought them there] took possession of them with great delight and satisfaction, and carried them off to the fairs and markets to be sold.”³ This is exactly what Satan wishes to do to those who dream of creating the same “utopia.”

[Part two: The Root of the Delusion]

¹ Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen, Always Ready, p. 96.
² Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio, p. 166.
³ Ibid., p. 187.