Independence Day celebrates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. But if you’ve read any of my previous articles, you know I like to dig deeper than the surface! What does it mean to be ‘independent’?

Per the dictionary: Independent (adjective)-free from outside control; not depending on another’s authority.

But independence without direction, specifically a moral compass, can create chaos. What happens to a society when one’s liberties clashes with their neighbor’s liberties? Is there ever a time when one individual’s liberty is oppressive to another’s? Who is to be the judge? And further, how do we gauge the authorities in our lives as to whether they are serving our best interest?

To answer these questions, I’ve consulted sources of wisdom far wiser than myself. In the Bible, the apostle Paul advises us to pray for government rulers “that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.” In this context, a government’s purpose is to create societies that allow its’ people to live peacefully and in a godly manner. Independence is not the end goal but the means to an end.

In our own history, Thomas Jefferson penned these words in the Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

In this context, we see the drive for independence away from a country that oppressed its’ citizens’ ‘unalienable rights’ that were ‘endowed by their Creator’. Again, independence is not the end of the matter, but only the beginning. Independence was pursued as a tool to reach our God given goals.

So as we celebrate the independence of our country from oppression, let’s do so with reverence and remember the purpose of that hard won liberty is to pursue peace and godliness…and don’t forget to pass the hot dogs!