It's A Trap!

God paid a high price for you, so don’t be enslaved by the world. [1 Corinthians 7.23]

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are declared by the US Declaration of Independence as God-given unalienable rights. Does this have anything to do with being "enslaved by the world?" Let's see...

Collectively, "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" was meant to be enjoyed as an endowment from God. However, when God is removed from the equation, "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" becomes a snare of the world - a bottomless pit hidden beneath a flag of freedom.

When God is ignored as the Provider of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, humanity is left to its own means and methods to obtain them. This problem is two-fold: first, if what is "good" is subject to human standard, then it is based on individual human whim or desire (which can be good or bad). Second, when humans provide Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness for themselves, they effectively make themselves their own god.

Without qualifying what is "good" by "God's provision" of it, each person is left to their own means of obtaining whatever they think is good. "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" becomes an all-consuming, self-centered, highly competitive, free-for-all frenzy of human effort to get all one can get. "Blessing" is only seen as the result of hard work in contrast to being a gift from God. Consequently, people make abandoned efforts to work, get education, build wealth, amass possessions, and secure esteem - all of which then become reasons why their duties to God, their families, and mankind are neglected. Ouch.

The United States of America, in many ways, has become an idol unto itself. Without God, the country has banished its citizens to the bottomless pit of self-centeredness - the quest for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness without God. Having removed God as the Provider of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, the nation has set its own trap and then plunged headlong into it.

"Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," without God, is a trap.

Father, give the people of the United States revelation of Your Sovereignty over this land. May You find a return to humility and prayer in this nation so You might forgive our pride and arrogance. As only You can do, release us from the snare of worldliness we set for ourselves so we might enjoy Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness from the work and provision of Your hand and not our own.