A nation’s monuments and national symbols reflect the heart of the people and identify what they believe is the source of their nation’s greatness and achievements. In this respect, America is unique among the nations of the world. Our monuments have no record of peoples or nations conquered or military encounters resulting in the destruction of cities and empires. America’s monuments and symbols contain the declaration that the source of our birth, liberty, and greatness is God.
Our nation’s faith in God is inscribed upon our buildings, monuments, and national symbols . . . and the memory of that faith, at least, is inscribed upon our hearts . . . bringing with it faint stirrings of a time when we were intensely aware that our source of greatness was God. In the words of Alexis de’Toqueville, writing at the time of America’s beginnings as a nation, “America is great because America is good; when America ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”
From the writing of the Mayflower Compact in 1620, on the cold and lonely shores of New England, through the halls of the Capitol Building, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, the House of Representatives, the Senate Building, the White House, our National Archives, the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, from Ellis Island and our Statue of Liberty to the Black Hills of South Dakota and Mount Rushmore, the unbroken thread runs through of faith in God, declaring with every dollar we spend, every pledge of allegiance, every opening of ballgames and national events, that it is “In God We Trust.”
How fittingly our Declaration of Independence begins with the acknowledgement of God as the source of Liberty, of Life, of the properties of Conscience, and the rights of men:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . (Indisputable truth!)
“That all men are created equal – and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights . . . (Rights that cannot be legally transferred or taken away by another – rights that are God-endowed, not government –granted!)
“To secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” (That is a sovereign people!)
A sovereign people – from which government gets its authority and its mandate . . . to secure human rights which are sacred.
That’s what America’s independence is all about!
Take Creator God out of the formula – the whole structure collapses!
The framers of the Declaration of Independence had their priorities straight. Our founding fathers knew the foundation upon which they built our Constitutional form of government.
The order: God, the ultimate Authority. Man, accountable to God – His partner in governing the world – in charge of his environment.
Remove man’s accountability to God, open the door to anarchy, which ushers in tyranny – and man becomes a victim of his environment.
The last stanza of our National Anthem, the beautiful Star-Spangled Banner, is one which many of us are unfamiliar with, but it ends with this prayer:
Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto, “In God is our Trust,”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Happy Birthday, America!
July 4, 2013
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