Where is true freedom found?

While enjoying the hospitable setting of gate C21 at Detroit Metro Airport on Wednesday, I watched part of a speech by Rick Perry at Liberty University. Early in his speech, very early on, he said:

There is no greater force for freedom than the men and women of the United States military.

Said in front of a presumably largely evangelical audience to raucous applause .

Excuse me?

I get what Perry is saying and why he is saying it in a political stump speech but the notion that the United States military is the greatest force for freedom in the world is a ridiculous statement for a professing Christian to make, especially in front of a Christian audience.

The Gospel and the Gospel alone is not only the greatest source of freedom in the world, it is the only true source of meaningful freedom. Let me say something I have written a dozen times before. The “freest” American who is outside of Christ is eternally in bondage. The poorest, imprisoned Christian languishing and perhaps tortured in the prison of some repressive regime is far more meaningfully free. We have lost what it means to be free because of our love of the world and what it offers us. Who wants to be hated and persecuted and ridiculed when you can be accepted and applauded and affluent?

The truth shall set you free. Not economic security. Not military superiority. The truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The chosen method of spreading this true freedom is a most unlikely source, a simple Christian telling someone about Jesus, not an American solider liberating Iraq or defeating Nazi Germany.

I like a lot of things about Rick Perry as a candidate. When he starts talking like he did Wednesday at Liberty or invokes the notion of being divinely “called” to run for President it makes me nervous and reminds me why so many Anabaptists eschewed being entangled in secular government. Placing our faith in anything other than Jesus Christ, whether that faith is in the military or our culture or money or religious institutions, is deadly dangerous and must be stamped out in our hearts, our homes and the church.