Tear Down This Wall!

It was 20 years ago this week that these words of President Reagan were realized. Just two years before, President Reagan stood at the wall that divided East and West Germany and gave a strong admonition to then Soviet President Gorbachev: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" No one could have imagined at the time that within just a couple of years it would become a reality. I was in high school at the time of this event, and not much in world news was generally of interest to me (my top priorities were: girls, sports, friends, girls, hanging out, girls...) But I distinctly remember sitting in front of the television and watching that event as people used whatever they had to break off pieces of that wall and as East Germans, most of them for the first time in their lives, were able to get a taste of that precious thing called freedom.

It's been twenty years, and since that time all the other former Soviet republics, and Russia herself, have given up on the "ideals" of communism and embraced some form of democracy. The truth these countries have discovered is that people and societies function better when the citizens have a high level of freedom. The less freedom that exists, the more society tends to struggle. This contrast is nowhere better seen than when you compare North and South Korea. Same people, same area of the world, but one country gives its citizens freedom and flourishes while another keeps its citizens in bondage and they are literally starving. Societies and people flourish when they have a high level of freedom.

Unfortunately, in our country and in many around the world, we have those freedoms given to us by our constitution, but so many people find themselves in bondage. In the United States, while they may have the freedoms given by the Bill of Rights, people are in chains to addictions, or to dysfunctional relationships, or to some sin that has a hold on them, or any number of other things that can keep make us feel trapped. If you do not believe that there are things in our world that can imprison us, just talk to someone who has tried to give up smoking, or someone who is addicted to alcohol or drugs and feels completely trapped by that substance, or someone who is addicted to pornography and would love to be free from it. We may have freedom, but we so often allow ourselves to be thrown into a prison we've created.

Galatians 5:1 reads: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free." Jesus Christ died on the cross not only for us to have forgiveness of sin, but freedom from sin. Through Christ, we are able to be free from those things that can chain us and make us feel imprisoned. Maybe today there is something in your life that has you feeling like you are a prisoner of your own making. Here's a little advice, encouragement, nugget of wisdom, or whatever: if you really want to tear down that wall and to be free from that thing that binds you, then focus your attention on the One who gives us the ability to find true freedom.