So I’m watching Ted Cruz’s speech at the GOP Convention tonight when he says the following:
“Our nation is exceptional because it was built on the five most beautiful and powerful words in the English language, ‘I want to be free.'”
Really? Those are the five most beautiful and powerful words?
Wait, I thought Ted Cruz was a Christian. He certainly plays the Christian card when it suits him. And yet here he is lighting upon what he thinks are the five most beautiful and powerful words in English, by which I assume he means to say the one most beautiful and powerful sentence in English. (After all, I think we can all agree that there is nothing especially beautiful or powerful about those particular words. “To”, for example, is marvelously useful, but it is known neither for beauty nor for power. So it must be that Cruz really meant these words express the most beautiful and powerful sentence in English.)
Again, I thought Ted Cruz was a Christian. And yet, his most beautiful sentence, his most powerful thought, begins with ‘I’. It contains no mention of God or love or any other virtue.
That’s the most beautiful and powerful sentence in Ted Cruz’s mind. Really?
But at least he ends with “free”. Freedom is important, right?
Well, yes, sort of. But here’s the problem. Cruz set up his sentence by describing how in the United States the people limit governmental power. Within that context, he clearly understands freedom to mean lack of constraint. And any Christian should appreciate that defining freedom merely in terms of lack of constraint is, to say the least, grossly limited.
Indeed, grossly limited doesn’t quite cut it. Defining freedom simply in terms of lack of constraint is a theological error so egregious that it recalls to mind that primal rebellion in the Garden.
