In my novels, short stories, and blog, I write a lot about freedom.
What does freedom mean to you?
For many it means to do whatever I want, which indicates that a personal choice is involved. What we want is at least possible because of basic freedoms that other Americans throughout history have fought for, even died for. And the rest of us benefit from that.
But if an Iraqi or Syrian Christian was asked what freedom means, what would their answer be? What would the answer of a WWII Jew under Hitler have been? Or an African American, under slavery? Or further back, an Irish Catholic under the Penal Laws of Oliver Cromwell? Where is/was freedom for these?
In my yet unpublished historical novel, Echoes of the Risen, Nell Dugan, who along with her family, fought against British tyranny both in England and the new America, has this to say at the end of the American Revolution: The others celebrated our victory for weeks, but I had no enthusiasm after the ghastly murders of Robin and William. All my life I’d dreamed of freedom, strived for freedom, killed for freedom. Now it was here, and I thought only of its lavish price.
Freedom does have a lavish price–a price paid through the personal choices of individuals to be courageous.
Every individual who attempts to make the world a more noble place will pay the price. They will pay a price when lies are told in order to smother their voices of belief, and bring them down. They will pay a price when the courage of their convictions are twisted by the less noble, and they are called bigots, or racists, or homophobics. They will pay a price when the forces of political correctness stomp on their heart-felt values in an attempt to destroy them.
But without their courage, those heart-felt values will surely vanish—exactly what happens in my novelette, Mary’s Mountain when God, and the liberty He has given us, is annihilated.
And it’s still FREE on Kindle for a few more days.
Translating a World on the Edge 