Freedom Doesn't Mean, 'Free For All'

We recently received a shorter version of the following message, provided by Dr. Adrian Rogers. This piece consists of Page 138 from his book, Ten Secrets for a Successful Family (details below). Although we don't necessarily subscribe to the biblical part of this, it still rings true as to how we feel about what has been happening in our society today. It brings to mind the person we saw being interviewed in the news after coming out of her polling precinct, all aglow with the belief that if her chosen candidate makes it into office, he will "Help pay my mortgage and pay for gas for my car".

We are in an era of entitlement, which is where people constantly worry about "What's in it for me?", rather than "What can I do for others?" We hope you understand our frustration, as we feel we are forced to watch what may very well be the beginning of the end of American society as we had once known it to be...

- BEGIN QUOTE -

By, Dr. Adrian Pierce Rogers.

Let me say a word here that may sound political. I hope not, because I believe it’s moral and biblical.

You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the industrious out of it. You don’t multiply the wealth by dividing it. Government cannot give anything to anybody that it doesn’t first take from somebody else.

Whenever somebody receives something without working for it, somebody else has to work for it without receiving. The worst thing that can happen to a nation is for half of the people to get the idea they don’t have to work because somebody else will work for them, and the other half to get the idea that it does no good to work because they don’t get to enjoy the fruit of their labor.

Something very sad has happened in America. The hippies and flower children of the sixties – who went around smoking dope, crying out about peace and free love, and urging kids to “turn in, tune in, and drop out” - took off their tattered jeans and their beads, trimmed their hair, put on suits, and went to Washington.

But they took with them their hippie philosophy that the only dirty four-letter word is WORK. So what we have is the biggest cultural revolution in America’s history. We raised a generation that did not understand or value the work ethic. And they turned their philosophy into legislation.

The result is that America is still suffering today from the lack of a biblical work ethic. And even many of those who are working are not working for the pleasure and joy of cooperating with Almighty God. They’re only working to get enough money so they can stop working.

The socialists had the badly flawed idea that all you had to do was pool a nation’s wealth and turn everyone into a worker for the state. If you want to see the dismal failure of that philosophy, just walk the gray streets of Moscow as I have done and see Russia’s crumbling infrastructure.

When I was in Russia our guide told us, “You know what was wrong with communism? Under communism we pretended to work, and they pretended to pay us, and everything went under”

Do you know what’s wrong in America today? We have created a society perilously close to that description, a society in which some people are better off by not working.

- END QUOTE -

Bibliography Notes:
Rogers, Adrian (1996). Ten Secrets for a Successful Family. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books. Page 138. ISBN 1581340338