Freedom Is Not Free

Before I get to the explanation of the topic "Freedom Is Not Free," I want to share a personal story that led me to think about, and write about that phrase.

From February 6th through the 17th, I was in the midst of the Blizzard of 2010. Yes. This California gal was visiting her mom back east. I ended up being smack dab in the middle of several snow storms that wreaked havoc on the east coast.

It has been several years since I have shoveled snow. Well, over the course of several days, I ended up shoveling snow five times! I hate when the snow plow comes along and drops those large chunks of icy snow right in front of the driveway!

Anyway, I had a great visit with my mom. She is very frail now. Each year when I go back for 10 days to stay with her, it ends up being such a sweet time.

Fortunately, we were able to get out of the house before one snow storm, and then again in between the second and third one.

I discovered that the mall a few miles from her home offers free rental of wheelchairs. This enabled us to spend several hours at the mall without her tiring too easily. My mom can still walk, but she gets pain in one leg if she walks long distances.

Since her birthday was coming up in April, I asked her to shop for her own gift. I thought that when we reached the clothing racks, she would get up and look around. Nope! She enjoyed looking at the clothes sitting in the wheelchair, while directing me to push her all around the Macy's women's department.

A beautiful pants suit caught her eye. The jacket was lime green with black piping around the collar. The pants were black. The sales lady was kind enough to pick out some shell tops for her to try on under the jacket. She looked beautiful in it!! I was so excited to buy it for her. The pants needed hemming, but other than that it was a great fit!

We enjoyed lunch at the Nordstrom Cafe. We had soup and salad, and split a delicious frosted carrot cake. I loved that cake so much, I asked the lady at the register if I could purchase a whole cake to take home. She told me she could order it and it would be $40.00. Forty dollars? Must be one of those fancy bakery-type cakes! Still, I should have bought one more piece to take home!

One Saturday evening, I invited my Aunt Alex to join us for dinner at one of our favorite Italian restaurants. We got there very early (4:30 p.m.), before the crowd would get there.

My Aunt Alex is the older sister of my mom. She is sharp as a whip, funny, active, still drives and still bowls once a week! She might not like me to share her age, so I won't. She is a great person and I love her so much!

Aunt Alex is a senior leader of the Lady's Auxiliary in her town. They hold annual spaghetti dinners to benefit war vets who are recovering from their injuries and/or need prosthetic limbs. During the event, people buy raffle tickets to win prizes. Many of the prizes are small blankets from USA Cares - the same organization that comedian Dennis Miller (often seen on The O'Reilly Factor show segments) promotes. My mom has won several of these blankets from past fund raisers. She had one at home that read: "Freedom Is Not Free." I asked her if I could have it. She said yes. It was nice to have that little blanket in my carry-on bag so that I could rest my head against it during the long plane flight home. More about that saying in a moment.

One of the funniest moments at the restaurant was when I told both of them that this dinner is my treat. My Aunt Alex was hesitant to order the scallops dinner that she wanted because it was so expensive (wasn't really - only $17.00). I told her, "Go ahead and order it! My husband gave me lots of spending money for this trip! I'm getting the crab-stuffed shrimp ($18.00)." Next, it was time to see what my mom wanted. She said, "Spaghetti and meatballs." Now, my aunt rolled her eyes. She said, "we both have freezers full of leftover spaghetti and meatballs! Don't you dare order that!" We both spent the next 15 minutes trying to get my mom to order something different. To no avail. Finally, my aunt said (kiddingly, of course), "Helen, if you order spaghetti and meatballs I'm gonna kill you!" I laughed so hard!! Meanwhile, the original waiter gave up on us and a new waitress came over to get our orders. We must have been sitting there laughing and talking for half an hour!

Our meals were delicious! My mom was stubborn and went ahead and ordered her spaghetti and meatballs. Aunt Alex did the familiar family hand wave of disgust. What a riot!

When we dropped off Aunt Alex at home, she gave her sister a kiss and said, "Love you!" I chuckled to myself. A few hours ago she was humorously irritated with her sister.

Unfortunately, my mom ended up with a bit of heartburn from the meal. I saw her pop two tums chewables when we got home. She shoulda listened to us!

If you have been patient enough to read through the personal account above, thank you! I am now leading up to discussing the title of this post.

The saying, "Freedom Is Not Free" is very true. We all know how our brave military has been instrumental in keeping America free and protecting our homeland throughout our history. We know how they helped the cause of freedom around the world in World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the war in Afghanistan; just to name a few.

Former President Reagan said this classic quote:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

Ronald Reagan
40th president of US (1911 - 2004)

Did you read that? "It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same..."

Freedom Is Not Free.

I have recently become a member of The Heritage Foundation. I have donated to that worthy cause several times. I will do so again, especially after reading the latest awesome letter that I received from Edwin J. Feulner, Ph.D. - President of the foundation.

My next post will share the details of that letter [See Some Conservative Intellectual Wisdom]

For now, I want to talk about the fact that the saying "Freedom Is Not Free" can also be applied to the freedom that is offered to us through the Person of Jesus Christ.

The Christian faith is based on the Cross of Christ. The Gospel message is one that informs us (via the Bible) that Jesus Christ died for the sins of mankind, so that we could be free from the punishment of eternal death.

Again, Freedom Is Not Free. Someone had to pay the price. Jesus Christ paid the price on that cross at Calvary, over 2,000 years ago.

Non-believers often scoff at this idea. They take on the attitude that one Man, could not possibly have done what Christ claimed to do. One Man, could not possibly achieve what Christ claimed to achieve. To them, it's all "rubbish," "lies," "myth," "an impossibility" due to what we know about science...and the list could go on and on. Unfortunately, the physical world is all that they believe in. They say, "show me - then I will believe." Christian faith says, "Believe, then you will see." It's a spiritual thing that cannot be measured by science, man's wisdom, man's knowledge, man's personality, or man's thoughts.

In the Old Testament, God tells us through Isaiah:

Isa 55:8 For my thoughts [are] not your thoughts, neither [are] your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

So, the question becomes, how do we find out God's thoughts? This side of heaven, we cannot find out all of them. However, God has given us the Bible - His written Word, and Jesus Christ - His Living Word to inform us of what we need to know during our brief life on this earth in order to be reconciled back to God and spend eternity in heaven with Him.

The scoffers often try and point out errors and flaws in Scripture. They relish finding verses and quoting them out of context to support their own personal views.

Here's an example.

Over at my Talk Wisdom forum, GMPilot (a self-described non-believer in Christ) wrote this in the Che: The Evil Murderer thread:

I'd really like to know...if Guevara was an "evil murderer", who is a good murderer?

Apparently, GMPilot objected to my labeling of Che as an "evil" murderer.

My reply:

The point of this post was to show how people often follow a kind of "groupthink" about past revolutionaries - good, bad, or downright evil - without knowing the history of the person. How else could it be explained that so many young people who worked in the Obama campaign of 2008 allowed posters of Che to be up in the election headquarters? Why would they wear t-shirts and why would a model wear underwear with Che's face all over it?

It's either ignorance or complicity. Take your pick.

Then GM wrote:

Quote:
Christine: The point of this post was to show how people often follow a kind of "groupthink" about past revolutionaries - good, bad, or downright evil - without knowing the history of the person.

I could say the same about those so-called "TEA party-ers" who carry quotes from certain of the Founders without fully understanding their meaning. Or those who equate socialism with fascism, ignorant of the fact that the two systems are incompatible with each other, let alone with what we've got.
IMHO, true patriots never proclaim themselves as such; they don't need to.

Quote:
Christine: How else could it be explained that so many young people who worked in the Obama campaign of 2008 allowed posters of Che to be up in the election headquarters?

How many election headquarters? Which one(s)? Where? All I hear is rhetoric, not facts.

Quote:
Christine: Why would they wear t-shirts and why would a model wear underwear with Che's face all over it?

If you don't know why people wear t-shirts, it's too late to explain anything to you. If I were a model, I'd wear underwear with Che's face on it; I know all about Che Guevara, and he can kiss my ass. Literally. On my skivvies.

Quote:
Christine: It's either ignorance or complicity. Take your pick.

I pick ignorance; ignorance can be cured. Obviously there's a lot of it out there, if Beck feels he must educate his audience about Che!

I repeat...if Guevara was an "evil murderer", who is a good murderer?

Perhaps this guy?

My second reply:

Abortion advocates and abortionists?

Quote:
GM: I'd really like to know...if Guevara was an "evil murderer", who is a good murderer?

In the view of liberal leftists who do all that they can to protect abortion "rights," perhaps you could call them advocates for "good" murder and the abortionists "good" murderers? Of course, they are only "good" in their own minds...

Woe to those who would call evil "good" and good, "evil."
__________________
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. Colossians 2:8

The eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth to show Himself strong to those whose hearts are fully committed to Him. 2 Chronicles 16:9

GM wrote:

Re: Post #9479


Don't go dumping the definitions on me, hostess. You determined that Che was an "evil murderer', so I assumed you knew what a "good" one was. I offered you a couple of possibilities, and you wouldn't commit to either one.
If you find you can't answer that question, maybe you should retract that adjective and just settle for "murderer".

Quote:
Woe to those who would call evil "good" and good, "evil."

Murder isn't "evil" if He commands it, though. Ever notice that?
__________________
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration--courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth." --H L Mencken

"When someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes." --"Ghostbusters"

I included our tag lines in the last two comments because I thought they were so fitting to the differences in our spiritual beliefs.

Notice that GMPilot did not address the issue of abortion as being considered as "good murder" - which pro-abortion advocates must obviously think. Otherwise, abortion would be unthinkable to them, would it not?

I have not yet responded to GM's last comment. I find it strange that he now claims to object to my use of the adjective "evil" to describe a person who was a murderer. And, GM objects to the fact that God has the power over life and death. He seems to think that is evil.

My question. Who but the Creator of the Universe should have the ultimate power over life and death?

Taking Scripture out of context is a sport with many atheists/skeptics/Christian haters. The fact that many of these kinds of people hate the God of the Bible is quite evident, too.

The fact that Scripture upholds the death penalty bothers them, as well. But what would they want? Freedom for murderers to get away with their crimes? Life in prison without the possibility of parole?

The admonition, "Thou shalt not murder" in the Ten Commandments does not mean that the act of killing (for self-defense, in war, in protecting family etc.) is never justified. That is a misconception by some who can't understand why there is a death penalty in the first place.

[Note: Please see the essay at the end of this post for Greg Koukl's excellent article: What Exodus 21:22 Says About Abortion. It includes some facts about why the death penalty in the Old Testament is considered biblical.]

Physical death is the penalty for sin that every human being must go through. However, without the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross - the idea that sinners can be set free from spiritual death without confessing and recognizing that Christ paid the penalty for their sin - would not be justice.

Thus, we come full circle on the idea that "Freedom Is Not Free." Of course, this is not an exhaustive essay on the topic. Much more can be written and said about it. But I hope that this brief explanation will get readers thinking about why that phrase is so true.

It also explains why many Americans today are protesting this out-of-control government takeover that we are experiencing today at an alarming rate.

Our Charters of Freedom are on the line. When our United States Constitution is ignored by government leaders, and a presidency can be usurped due to cover-up, we can see the inherent danger that we face in losing our freedoms; as well as our way of life via what the Founding Fathers envisioned for our Constitutional Republic.

Recall what Benjamin Franklin once said to a woman who asked the question, "what type of government have you given us, sir? He replied, "We have given you a Republic, if you can keep it."

What are you willing to do to keep our Constitutional Republic here in the United States of America intact?

If you want to find out what you can do, go to ResistNet.com

You can have most of your questions about the forum answered here.

*******

Copy of Greg Koukl's essay:

What Exodus 21:22 Says About Abortion



Gregory Koukl

The Torah's teaching about accidental "miscarriage"; has been hotly contested concerning the value of the unborn. Is it pro-life or pro-abortion? Here are the facts. You decide.


Most attempts to argue against abortion from biblical texts are misdirected. In the absence of specific prohibitions of abortion in the Scripture, Christian pro-lifers quote equivocal passages.

Some citations use personal pronouns to describe the unborn, but many of these are in poetry texts, so the conclusion is not entirely convincing. God’s personal acquaintance with the unborn can be explained by His omniscience. After all, some texts make it clear that God “knows” us even before we’re conceived.

One text, however, is strong. Exodus 21:22-25 is usually used to argue that the Bible assigns a lower value to the unborn than to other humans. Rabbis and Jewish thinkers I’ve discussed this point with on the radio have been especially adamant--even irate. I think the evidence shows, though, that Moses taught just the opposite. If I’m right, we have a powerful argument for the value Scripture puts on the life of the unborn.


Dead or Alive?

The New American Standard Bible (NASB) renders Exodus 21:22-25 this way:

And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no [further] injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him; and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any [further] injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.[1]
This translation suggests that if a miscarriage takes place and the child is lost, the antagonists are simply fined, but if the mother dies in the scuffle, then the penalty is “life for life.” In the Torah, it seems, the unborn is not considered fully human.

Theologian Millard Erickson notes that in this view, “the lex talionis [life for life] is applied only if the mother is harmed. On this basis it is concluded that the fetus was not considered a soul or a person, and thus is not to be thought of as fully human.”[2]

At issue is the phrase translated “she has a miscarriage.” There is an assumption made about this word that is crucial. In English, the word “miscarriage” implies the death of the child. Webster’s New World Dictionary defines miscarriage as, “The expulsion of the fetus from the womb before it is sufficiently developed to survive.”[3] In the struggle, the child is aborted, and so a fine is levied.

Here’s the crux of the issue: Does the Hebrew word carry the same meaning? Is it correct to presume that the miscarriage of Exodus 21:22 produces a dead child, just like an abortion? This is the single most important question that needs to be answered here. If it does, the English word “miscarriage” is the right choice. If it does not, then the picture changes dramatically.

Are we justified in assuming that the child is dead? The answer is in the original language. There’s a history of how these words are used in the Hebrew Bible, and that history is important. Let’s look at it.


Yeled and Yasa

A word’s meaning in any language is determined in two steps. We learn a word’s range of meaning--its possible definitions--inductively by examining its general usage. We learn its specific meaning within that range by the immediate context.

The relevant phrase in the passage, “...she has a miscarriage...,” reads w˚yase û ye ladêhâ in the Hebrew. It’s a combination of a Hebrew noun--yeled--and a verb--yasa--and literally means “the child comes forth.” The NASB makes note of this literal rendering in the margin.

The Hebrew noun translated “child” in this passage is yeled[4] (yeladim in the plural), and means “child, son, boy, or youth.”[5] It comes from the primary root word yalad,[6] meaning “to bear, bring forth, or beget.” In the NASB yalad is translated “childbirth” 10 times, some form of “gave birth” over 50 times, and either “bore,” “born,” or “borne” 180 times.

The verb yasa[7] is a primary, primitive root that means “to go or come out.” It is used over a thousand times in the Hebrew Scriptures and has been translated 165 different ways in the NASB--escape, exported, go forth, proceed, take out, to name a few. This gives us a rich source for exegetical comparison. It’s translated with some form of “coming out” (e.g., “comes out,” “came out,” etc.) 103 times, and some form of “going” 445 times.

What’s most interesting is to see how frequently yasa refers to the emergence of a living thing:

Genesis 1:24 “Then God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind’; and it was so.”
Genesis 8:17 [to Noah] “Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you, birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth....”

Genesis 15:4 “This man will not be your heir; but one who shall come forth from your own body....”

Genesis 25:25-26 “Now the first came forth red, all over like a hairy garment; and they named him Esau. And afterward his brother came forth with his hand holding on to Esau’s heel, so his name was called Jacob.”

1 Kings 8:19 “Nevertheless you shall not build the house, but your son who shall be born to you, he shall build the house for My name.”

Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

2 Kings 20:18 “And some of your sons who shall issue from you, whom you shall beget, shall be taken away; and they shall become officials in the palace of the king of Babylon.”

As you can see, it’s common for yasa to describe the “coming forth” of something living, frequently a child. There is only one time yasa is clearly used for a dead child. Numbers 12:12 says, “Oh, do not let her be like one dead, whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes from his mother’s womb!”

Note here, that we don’t infer the child’s death from the word yasa, but from explicit statements in the context. This is a still-birth, not a miscarriage. The child is dead before the birth (“whose flesh is half eaten away”), and doesn’t die as a result of the untimely delivery, as in a miscarriage.

Yasa is used 1,061 times in the Hebrew Bible. It is never translated “miscarriage” in any other case. Why should the Exodus passage be any different?


Clues from the Context

This inductive analysis shows us something important: Nothing about the word yasa implies the death of the child. The context may give us this information, as in Numbers 12:12, but the word itself does not.

This leads us to our next question: What in the context justifies our assumption that the child that “comes forth” is dead? The answer is, nothing does. There is no indication anywhere in the verse that a fine is assessed for a miscarriage and a more severe penalty is assessed for harming the mother.

This becomes immediately clear when the Hebrew words are translated in their normal, conventional way (the word “further” in the NASB is not in the original):

“And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that the child comes forth, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him; and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life....”
The text seems to require a fine for the premature birth, but injury to either of the parties involved incurs a more severe punishment.[8] Millard Erickson notes that “there is no specification as to who must be harmed for the lex talionis [life for life] to come into effect. Whether the mother or the child, the principle applies.”[9]

Gleason Archer, Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, concludes:

“There is no ambiguity here, whatever. What is required is that if there should be an injury either to the mother or to her children, the injury shall be avenged by a like injury to the assailant. If it involves the life (nepes) of the premature baby, then the assailant shall pay for it with his life. There is no second-class status attached to the fetus under this rule; he is avenged just as if he were a normally delivered child or an older person: life for life. Or if the injury is less, but not serious enough to involve inflicting a like injury on the offender, then he may offer compensation in monetary damages...”[10]
Two Rejoinders

Two further objections need to be dealt with. First, if this is a premature birth and not a miscarriage, why the fine?

Babies born prematurely require special care. Because their prenatal development has been interrupted, they are especially prone to difficulty. Pre-term babies often can’t breast feed, and there can be respiratory problems leading to permanent brain damage. The fine represents reimbursement for the expense of an untimely birth, and punitive damages for the serious trauma.

Anyway, even if the fine was for the miscarriage, this wouldn’t prove the child was less than human. A few verses later (v. 32), Moses imposes a fine for the death of a slave, but this doesn’t mean the slave is sub-human.

Second, was this the only word that could be used to indicate a miscarriage? No. Two other words were available to convey this particular meaning, if that’s what the writer had in mind: nepel and sakal. These are used seven times in the Hebrew text.

The noun nepel[11] means “miscarriage” or “abortion,” and is used three times:

Job 3:16 “Or like a miscarriage which is discarded, I would not be, as infants that never saw light.”
Eccl. 6:3-4 “If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, however many they be, but his soul is not satisfied with good things, and he does not even have a proper burial, then I say, ‘Better the miscarriage than he, for it comes in futility and goes into obscurity.’”

Psalms 58:8 “Let them be as a snail which melts away as it goes along, like the miscarriages of a woman which never see the sun.”

The verb sakal[12] means “to be bereaved” and is used four times, including one time when it’s actually translated “abort:”

Genesis 31:38 “These twenty years I have been with you; your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried, nor have I eaten the rams of your flocks.”
Exodus 23:26 “There shall be no one miscarrying or barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.”

Hosea 9:14 “Give them, O Lord-- what wilt Thou give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.”

Job 21:10 “His ox mates without fail; his cow calves and does not abort.

Moses had words in his vocabulary that literally meant abortion or miscarriage, but he didn’t use them in Exodus 21:22. Instead, he chose the same word he used in many other places to signify a living child being brought forth.

Yasa doesn’t mean miscarriage in the sense we think of that word. Instead, the combination of yeled with yasa suggests a living child coming forth from the womb. Nowhere else is this word ever translated “miscarriage.” Why? Because the word doesn’t mean the baby is still-born. It simply means the child comes out.


Three Questions

When someone raises this issue with you, ask these three questions.

First, why presume the child is dead? Though the English word “miscarriage” entails this notion, nothing in the Hebrew wording suggests it. Yasa doesn’t mean miscarriage; it means “to come forth.” The word itself never suggests death.[13] In fact, the word generally implies the opposite: live birth. If it’s never translated elsewhere as miscarriage, why translate it that way here?

Second, what in the context itself implies the death of the child? There’s nothing that does, nothing at all. The fine does not necessarily mean the child is dead, and even if it did this wouldn’t indicate that the child wasn’t fully human (as in the case of the slave in v. 32).

Third, ancient Hebrew had a specific word for miscarriage. It was used in other passages. Why not here? Because Moses didn’t mean miscarriage. When his words are simply taken at face value, there is no confusion at all. The verse is clear and straight-forward. Everything falls into place.

Regardless of the translation, it’s clear that killing the child--and the text does refer to the unborn as a child--is a criminal act. There is no justification for abortion-on-demand from the Torah. Instead, we have a reasonable--even powerful--argument that God views the unborn as valuable as any other human being.




-------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] The 1995 updated version of the NASB now renders this verse, “If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined...” etc.
[2] Millard Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985), p. 555.

[3] Webster’s New World Dictionary, Second College Edition (New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1984).

[4] Strong’s Index word #3206.

[5] Definitions come from the New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance. For further documentation, see the Hebrew/English Lexicon of the Old Testament, by Brown, Driver and Briggs, the standard lexicon of ancient Hebrew.

[6] Strong’s Index word #3205.

[7] Strong’s Index word #3318.

[8] The New International Version is correct in rendering this passage, “If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life.”

[9] Millard Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985), p. 556.

[10] Gleason Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), p. 248.

[11] Strong’s Index word #5309.

[12] Strong’s Index word #7921.

[13] Again, in the Numbers passage the context indicates the death, not the word yasa itself.





This is a transcript of a commentary from the radio show "Stand to Reason," with Gregory Koukl. It is made available to you at no charge through the faithful giving of those who support Stand to Reason. Reproduction permitted for non-commercial use only. ©2002 Gregory Koukl

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