Welcome to The Christian Libertarian.

This site is about advocating for and protecting one of God’s most wonderful gifts.

The Biblical account of creation records various expressions of God’s radical love for humankind; gifts, if you will.  On the sixth day, humankind was created and given life.  That same day, humanity was given a divinely ordained role of authority and responsibility over the earth.  As man and woman were made, they were blessed and released to fulfill their given purpose.  God also provided for them, and gave them every seed bearing plant and fruit for food.  Even the specific account of the creation of man and woman in Genesis chapter 2 suggests a kind of generous affection.  With the intimate touch of a good father, God tenderly breathes life into Adam’s nostrils, and when it’s time for woman to be made, the man is gently sedated with sleep and then healed from the surgery.  Then the woman is brought to him, and the gifts of attraction and love and intimacy are bestowed upon our kind.  To our day we have seen that these gifts of life, purpose, providence and procreative joy are all very, very, good.

But even after all these wonders, there was another gift in the garden.  A tree.  Adam was given wide permission for the whole garden: every tree was available for food, except for one.  The one tree was dangerous.  To eat from it would kill.  It was a tempting tree, to be sure.  The knowledge of good and evil hung low from its branches.  But the gift to humankind was not the fruit of that tree, but the fact of its existence.  The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was an incredible gift to humanity simply because it was there.  Though Adam and Eve were commanded not to eat from it, the fact that the tree was set in the garden offers one of the greatest illustrations of what God’s real radical love for us is like.

What do I mean?  Think of it this way:  God could have a made a garden without that tree.  In doing so He could have created humankind safely, without the risk of disobedience, consequence, suffering or separation.  God could have made sure that humankind never rebelled or rejected him.  We could have been boxed into friendship with him.  We could have been made trapped forever into a future of his authoritarian making.  It would have been a great future.  Purpose and providence forever guaranteed.  We would have been forever blessed, happy and peaceful.  All God needed to do was take away that tree.

But God did not take away that tree.  In his kindness and out of his love, he did not create that kind of garden.

Instead, the perfect place for humanity was a garden with that forbidden tree.  And that kind of garden was perfect because only in that kind of garden were the people God had made truly free.  No matter how dark and dangerous that tree was, its presence signals the greatest gift of God to humanity after himself, and a life of knowing and enjoying him:

Freedom . . .

God could have commanded our obedience, and then chained us to no option otherwise.  He could have demanded love, and then dragged it out of us by limiting the potential affections of our heart.   But God loves us.  His desire for us was that we be able to experience the wonders of real freely motivated love – the way he loves.  And so in the garden, at great risk to the tenderness of his own divine kind heart, he gave us freedom.  The tree signifies that great gift: the genuine freedom to walk away from God and live through the consequences of that choice, and the freedom even to return to him when consequence has ripped us apart.  The gift of that freedom is the only thing in this world that guarantees the possibility that humankind may experience real love in a voluntary relationship with God.  Without that freedom, real love is impossible and life is left utterly meaningless.

I believe that God’s gift of freedom must be preserved at all costs.  It is given by God to all humankind and is not subject to any government, court, or other human authority.  Any society which forgets the priority of that freedom, and so seeks inappropriately to limit its citizens and force compliance, even for some well-intended goal, is a vile blemish on the earth – a beast of apocalyptic proportions.

The societal agenda of the Christian Libertarian is to call for the vigorous protection of our sacred God given freedom so that all people may come to know God for themselves in a personal and relational way.