Freedom's Requirements
by Fred Jackson
July 12, 2005
(AgapePress) - Our little bus came to a stop after another adventure down a potholed street in a poor neighborhood of Tirana, Albania, on the west side of the Adriatic Sea.This capital city along with the rest of the country still suffers the effects of years of communist oppression. Evangelical Christianity is barely tolerated. So it's not surprising that on this Sunday morning in 2005, we didn't see anything that looked like a church building. We never would.
Our guide led us down an alleyway and then opened a gate to a small compound. A man introduced as the pastor smiled warmly and directed us into a small room. The morning service had already started. Thirty or so people, many of them young adults, crammed into the tiny space that was lit by a single light bulb dangling from the ceiling. They sang with a joy that could come only from a Spirit-filled heart. The sermon was a hard-hitting message about the dangers of sin. After the service, the people shook our hands. Some hugged us and thanked us repeatedly for coming. I didn't deserve their gratitude. I was the one who had been blessed.
I'm back home in the U.S. now. Here, years of freedom have allowed Christianity to flourish. There's a church on almost every corner. Our religious freedom is pretty much taken for granted.
And that can be dangerous. Because unless we are vigilant, we can find ourselves developing an apathy toward defending biblical truths as well as our liberty to worship. And in that kind of spiritual environment, our freedom to live out those biblical truths can vanish.
So in some strange way, the growing attacks against our Christian values in America may be a blessing in disguise. Adversity has a way of igniting passions to defend what's important in our lives. And that's not a bad thing.
Additional Essays:
Freedom's Blessing
Freedom's Gift
Freedom's Promise
Freedom's Cost
Freedom's Foundation
Freedom's Courage
(links will be activated when essays are posted>
Fred Jackson is the news director of American Family Radio News. He recently spent three weeks in Eastern Europe. This essay appeared in the July 2005 issue of AFA Journal, a monthly publication of the American Family Association.
