The Truth Produces Freedom 

Do you recall how you learned how to ride a bike or how to read? The learning process is filled with figuring out how to work through the ups and downs, highs and lows of what was right and wrong.  It has been said that the journey is as important as the destination.  The step-by-step process we go through to accomplish things gives us a great deal of information to help us go forward.  If there is a future to be desired, it will be accompanied by a history filled with successes and failures.  History is important.  

At each level of accomplishment, there is birthed a sense of independence within us that inspires us because we can now do something that we could not do before.  We go from riding a bike to driving a car or flying a plane to get to places we never have.  We go from learning the alphabet to writing stories, poems, articles and books to nourish the mind.  Learning begets knowledge; knowledge begets new ideas; new ideas beget experimenting, and experimenting produces success and failure. Success and failure result in developing freedom that we did not have before. 

Freedom is something people desire.  Freedom is something people fight to obtain.  Freedom causes children to grow and go.  Freedom makes nations build and battle.  Freedom allows writers to write and thinkers to think things that have yet to be considered.  Freedom has to be fought for in order to obtain it and sustain it.

When we remember that the battlefield of life is filled with people on a continuous basis, it can make it difficult to look to the future and the past. History provides information that can be useful for what has to be done today for the benefit of tomorrow.  Learning does not take place in the absence of failure, or bad things happening, or negative behaviors.  July 4, 1776, June 19, 1865, June 6, 1944, May 5, 1862, December 7, 1941, and a host of other dates should be looked at through the lens of truth and acknowledged that for each of these days, there were good and bad consequences that help us enjoy the freedoms people enjoy today.  The celebration for freedom cannot be separated from the cost of freedom.

In the arena of life, we send others out to represent us so that we can have a sense of victory without having to pay the price.  We send soldiers out to war instead of us.  We send teachers out to teach our children.  We send teams out to present the best of ourselves.  Regardless of who we have representing us, we bask in the reflection of their victory or defeat.  Daily, we are challenged to share with each generation what the real cost of freedom is. Otherwise, they will be spectators who think the only time a person performs is when they are on center stage, never understanding how much work has to go on to get there.  

Freedom is our center stage. Let’s not cripple our children’s future freedom by teaching them a history that only tries to tell of the parts that look good to us.