What is freedom?

"Freedom is when you smell the beautiful flowers in the cemetery," says Grant, 5. I assume Grant is speaking of those above the ground, not below.

"Freedom is when someone was in jail and after one year, they were freed," says Tori, 8. "If I were in school, then at 2:50 p.m., I would go home with my mom or dad."

I think I see the connection you're making, Tori. At least you get to go home every day.

"I think that America needs God's help in the war right now. We need God's help to keep our freedom," says Langley, 8.

Veterans who have fought know the high cost of freedom. Wouldn't it be nice if all people were basically good? Wars would never be fought.

We're created in God's image, but sin has marred that image. History's tyrants and terrorists show the depths to which fallen humanity can descend. Adolf Hitler murdered millions of Jews. Joseph Stalin starved millions of Ukrainians. Fanatical terrorists kill innocent people.

America's Founding Fathers wisely designed the Constitution to protect the inalienable rights God gives to people created in his own image. They knew that any government asserting itself above God's authority is doomed to failure.

God acts freely, according to his own good pleasure, with absolute power apart from outside coercion. God the Father has given his Son all power and authority.

Christians living in fellowship with the Lord Jesus exercise power as stewards of whatever influence, assets and talent God has given them.

"Freedom is a way of life," says Jessica, 10. "It's the way people live and how you want to live. Jesus died for us to free us from our sins. This gives us the freedom as well to choose between good and bad, between the truth and the lie, between God's path and the devil's path."