BY DUANE COVRIG

AST SPRING WHEN I SWEPT OUT MY garage, I created more of a mess than I eliminated. That is, until my wife, an expert cleaner, came to my rescue. That experience reminded me of a truth I keep rediscovering: Not all sweeping cleans!

We have all watched newly converted parents sweep their lives and homes of "ungodliness," only to create more problems. We have watched teachers frighten their classes into a group of compliant rebels, while each child chomps at the bit to circumvent authority. We have watched pastors and lay leaders guilt their congregation into a reformed lifestyle, only to suck dry love, compassion, and Christian fun. I know firsthand these mistakes, having used the broom improperly many times as a parent, teacher, and leader. Lots of sweeping, not much cleaning!

As readers in the United States celebrate Independence Day, they'd do well to revisit their understanding and application of religious liberty--first as a political safeguard and then, more important, as a statement about God's relationship to them and their relationship to others.

Cleaning in Colonial America
Americans can thank Roger Williams for laying the groundwork for the doctrine of "separation of church and state." His 1630 Soul Liberty book and his life of preaching and relating to others, especially Native Americans, set the core attitudes, concepts, and experiences that gave religious liberty root in the United States. Williams knew the power of a voluntary service to God. He wanted the same for others.

He saw the abuse of forced religion in his native England. When he fled to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, he welcomed the liberty the New World of the Americas promised. But he was quickly disillusioned at what he saw. Many in the colony mistreated the Native Americans and mandated their own version of Christianity. Williams thought and acted differently, especially toward the Indians. He learned their language. He bought their land instead of taking it. He was eager to learn from them instead of assuming they were the "pagans" that needed to learn from the "Christians."

Williams preached the need for voluntary worship. He realized that anything short of voluntary service to Christ was a form of spiritual rape, a strong phrase he felt needed to be applied to the use of the strong arm of the state to enforce religious conformity. He knew firsthand the subtle influence Satan had in using coercion and force in promoting the gospel.

Williams was offered the position of pastor of the new colony's congregation, but his views were too radical for them. Instead of an official leader, he became a fugitive, a fugitive who would lead on a different drum. His views and sacrifices eventually made possible a refuge called Rhode Island. It became a sanctuary that attracted many of the first "nonconformists" of the day, earning it the nickname of Rogues' Island. However, this little experiment would later be incorporated into the religious liberty clause of the U.S. Constitution.

After four centuries one would think this political doctrine of religious liberty was set for good in the American experience. However, history shows that liberty ebbs and flows. Sometimes religious liberty calls for too great a restraint on the part of those in a dominant power. They are tempted to reach for the sword of the state and the brooms of superficial reform to reestablish their dwindling authority. It is part of Adventists' corporate identity to be concerned about fading liberties. We know that, just as people of Egypt forgot the good work of Joseph with the passing of the years, so 400 years after Williams, the nation runs the risk of forgetting the importance of religious liberty.

Our concern is legitimate. Zealous religious leaders always run the risk of overflowing their boundaries and requiring conformity. Their eagerness can drown the fine sensibilities required for a voluntary experience of the worship of God. Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson were two individuals who learned this truth the hard way. As Christians in prominent places, they saw the need for national reform and moral revival. They got on board the Moral Majority grandstanding campaign. Thomas and Dodson eventually experienced the corruption that occurs when the church exchanges love for coercive political tactics, Their analysis of the failures of the Religious Right in Blinded by Might detailed the mess such tactics create. "It is easier to believe our problems are about the things we see, rather than the things that are invisible. . . . We have confused political power with God's power. We think that if we can organize enough of the 'right kind' of people, we can reverse what we perceive as evidence of moral slide" (p. 187).^*

In a probing chapter entitled "Better Weapons," Thomas noted, "The temptation is always to do good, never evil" (p. 94). Good motives, good intentions, but wrong methods. "That's what makes [the false religion of coercion] so subtle, and that's why so many fall for the deception" (p. 94). "We suffer, not for failures of political organization, but from failures of love" (p. 95). "It is the power that comes from making disciples, helping the poor, visiting the sick, rearing a child, and comforting the dying. It can change a jaded society, because it can transform a hardened heart. But that change comes from within, not without" (p. 96).

They concluded with a sober self-evaluation. "We failed not because we were wrong about our critique of culture, or because we lacked conviction, or because there were not enough of us, or because too many were lethargic or uncommitted. We failed because we were unable to redirect a nation from the top down. Real change must come from the bottom up or, better yet, from the inside out" (p. 23).

The Broom of Religious Liberty
Religious liberty is a safeguard against this subtle but all too real temptation. That is why Adventists support religious liberty with reasoned voices, resources, time, and literature. However, religious liberty needs more than these to survive. It needs practice. It needs to be part of our deep sympathies for those whose beliefs make them different but whose right to their belief needs to be protected. Religious liberty is, as Williams showed, first and foremost a way to relate to God and to others.

True worship and true religion embraces the deepest emotions and will, but it does so in liberty, not in pagan conformity. Satan's goal has always been to warp the best religious sentiments and practices into a distorted view of Christ's character. He is not done using that method, as Adventists have argued in their apocalyptic view on the future of religious liberty in America (see 2 Thess. 2; Rev. 13). It is a subtle but powerful truth. If it happened to the Jewish leaders who proclaimed to be Sabbathkeeping, tithe-paying, health-reforming, prophet-believing, Advent-hoping, remnant people, it could happen to us.

That is where the invitation to be true believers in religious liberty calls for a deeper experience. Religious liberty is an understanding, an experience of how God relates to people. It creates a more open-and-honest worship with God that creates a more open-and-honest friendship with others. Religious liberty is about true worship compared to compulsory worship built on deception or force. It is the difference between the freedom in Christ and false freedom, and the difference between freedom in Christ and the rigors of false religion.

Jesus, in Matthew 12, nuances these differences, especially in His story of the cleaned-up house (verses 43-45). This house got swept but ended up hosting seven demons worse than the first. The short story echoed the powerful message of religious liberty: Be careful what and how you clean! You may sweep away the very things that bring true cleaning.

In this story an unclean spirit was tossed out of the person. It appeared to be a spiritual victory. Our inclination would have been to celebrate with a "testimonial service," but not Jesus. He saw that such tossing out was only superficial. He knew that sweeping needed to address the very "man" of the house and place in the heart of our religious experience the very nature of the true God. He knew the end of that person--or family or church or nation--would be worse if it did not address the core issue--the relationship between God and mankind. He knew that religious purging and sweeping could actually work against the establishment of a deeply divine relationship. He knew that false religion, with all its sweeping, would in fact increase the power of "devils" on the mind, body, and soul. He knew that if the gentleness and goodness of God were not central in washing the mind and restoring humans to true repentance in the heart, true and lasting conversion would not take root. Reform in the wrong way and in the wrong spirit leads to more satanic experiences and behaviors.

Redirecting the Broom
Religious reformers and dedicated leaders want to clean things up. And things--our hearts, our lives, our families, our churches, and our nations--need lots of cleaning. However, religious liberty reminds us that there is cleaning of the soul that is thorough, deep, and lasting; and then there is a temporary cleaning that merely uses Satan's methods with Christian wording.

Jesus' somber evaluation of the cleaned-up house raises probing questions: How can self-cleaning, family cleaning, church cleaning, and nation cleaning lead to bigger problems? What problems do would-be reformers create if their sweeping campaigns are not continually baptized by the Spirit of God, which is based on the law of liberty? What are God's methods and how can we use them in our struggle with bad habits, disobedient children, unloving and tepid churches, disengaged communities, and unstable nations?

The rest of Matthew 12 provides answers to these questions and a very systematic discussion of issues central to religious liberty. It is an analysis that merits more space than afforded here. Suffice it to say, Matthew 12 is a sober reminder that true religious freedom involves a liberating experience of Sabbath observance (verses 1-13), a better way to do evangelism (verses 14-21), a more thorough way to deliver people from the control of Satan (verses 22-33), a more effective way to make our words liberating and healing to others (verses 34-37), and a more universal and accurate way to understand who is and who isn't part of God's remnant and His eternal family of believers (verses 38-50).

As Independence Day approaches in the United States, I encourage Americans and everyone else to read this chapter in Matthew as you praise the Lord for your religious liberty. It will probably even make that liberty sweeter.

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^*Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson, Blinded by might: can the religious right save America? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1999).