By Allen Haynes • November 11, 2024

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Andy Stanley (00:02):
Hey everybody. Welcome to a special post-election edition of the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast. I’m Andy, and for the second week in a row, I want to depart from our standard leadership centric content to talk about, well, to talk about what everybody else is talking about, the state of the state, the future of our nation in light of what we have just gone through or you might say suffered through. You can’t help but wonder is this experiment and representative government even still working? And my answer to that question is it will continue to work as long as we the people working, but everybody’s got to do their part, right? So for the next few minutes, I’m going to define what I’m convinced is our part, by our, I mean my part and your part, but first a little US history to set this up. After declaring independence from Britain, our founding fathers went to work writing our constitution that creating this timeless document was not a casual endeavor, to say the least, due in part to the fact that our founding fathers disagreed with each other about so many things.

(01:11):
In the end, pretty much everybody involved was unhappy about something, but happy enough about most things to ratify it. Which reminds me of one of my favorite Winston Churchill quotes. He said, democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried. And I think we would all agree anyway. During the ratification process, our wise founding fathers acknowledged there was more work to be done. They needed to add language that would limit specific government powers in order to protect specific personal freedoms. The result was, of course, the Bill of Rights. And we take these rights for granted, or at least I know I do. But the notion of placing enforceable limits on government to protect the rights of individual citizens was largely unprecedented in the world. It was truly revolutionary. For most of human history, human rights were neither promised nor protected.

(02:06):
To this day, millions of people, women and children in particular, live without the basic rights guaranteed by our Bill of Rights, we’re guaranteed the right to due process trial by a jury, a free press, and this is where you come in. This is where we come in. Government and force laws and rights are not enough. Something else is needed, something that can’t be mandated, namely individual responsibility. And here’s why I say that. When it comes to freedom, most of us think in terms of individual freedom, not collective freedom. But here’s something we all know from personal experience, especially if you’re a parent, right? Must be coupled with responsibility or things go terribly wrong, right? Right. Must be coupled with responsibility or things go well, things go terribly wrong. At some point, an adult handed, most of us a key to their car and let us drive away alone for the first time.

(03:08):
Remember that we were legal and we had a right, but our parents were banking on us being responsible. And if we weren’t, well, I’m sure you were. Anyway, our founding fathers understood this relationship. They knew they could not enforce individual responsibility. That was up to the individual. John Adams, the second president of the United States, put it this way. He wrote, our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the governing of any other. This is a remarkable statement coming from someone who had helped craft the US Constitution. He considered that masterpiece of democracy wholly inadequate for governing irresponsible people. Truth be told, our bill of rights actually guarantees us the right to be irresponsible. But if enough Americans exercise that right again, things will go terribly wrong. In fact, my guess is that the issues that currently concern you most about our nation are connected to the irresponsible behavior of its citizens, right?

(04:19):
Truth is, laws are limited. Laws tell us how low we can go. Well, before we go to jail rights, tell us what we can demand for ourselves. But there’s something neither constitutional law nor the Bill of Rights can do. They can’t make us more responsible. They can’t inspire us to greatness. They don’t create a love of virtue or an appreciation for doing the right thing simply because it’s the right thing to do. Laws and rights don’t require or inspire us to treat others the way we want to be treated. Think about it. Traffic laws don’t create courteous drivers. Assault and battery laws don’t ensure someone is kind. Civil laws don’t make citizens more civil. The right to free speech certainly doesn’t encourage edifying encouraging speech. And as you may know from personal experience, neighborhood association rules don’t necessarily create good neighbors. They just put guardrails around potentially bad neighbors.

(05:18):
All that to say, laws put limits on the self-serving expression of our rights guaranteed to us by the Bill of Rights. This is why you can’t come into my house uninvited to exercise your free speech. So to sum up the bill of rights reflects what we are entitled to. Federal, state, and local laws tell us what we’re allowed to do, but that’s just not enough. Those two alone actually foster division to John Adams point, a third component is necessary to use one of his terms. The third component necessary is morality. While laws tell us what we must do, morality tells us what we ought to do. Rights divorce from personal responsibility eventually undermines personal freedom. Rights apart from responsibility breeds anarchy because eventually my expression of freedom will infringe on yours. In short liberty, apart from responsibility, eventually undermines liberty. And the solution is well, the solution is you.

(06:24):
The solution is me. The solution is us. We the people in the first century, one of Jesus’ most famous followers, made the following statement. And yes, his context was very different than ours, but the principle certainly applies. The apostle Paul wrote the following, he wrote, you, my brothers and sisters were called to be free. In other words, freedom was our creator’s idea. It’s the cry of the human heart. But the creator knew what we know. We have a tendency to abuse our freedom. So Paul issues this warning. He writes, you, my brothers and sisters were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge yourselves. In other words, don’t confuse liberty with entitlement. Don’t ask, how low can I go or what can I get by with? And then he adds this, and this would change everything. In fact, this would change everything in our homes, our neighborhoods, certainly our nation.

(07:21):
He writes, you, my brothers and sisters were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge yourselves, rather serve one another. Humbly in love His point. Don’t be selfish with your freedom. Be responsible with your freedom. True. We don’t have to. You have a right not to, but the world changes if we all decide to, if decide to put one another first, to honor one another, to respect one another, or at least treat one another respectfully. And if we choose to live litigate and demand our way like everybody else, the apostle Paul actually predicts our current national climate. This is amazing. This is amazing. He writes, if you bite and devour each other, in other words, if you demand your way at the expense of others, if you bite and devour each other, watch out. He writes, or you will be destroyed by each other.

(08:20):
Look around. Isn’t it true? Our division is consuming us. Us. We are devouring one another. We the people have become our own worst enemy. Our enemy is not the other party. Our enemy is division caused by laws and rights, divorced from personal responsibility. Selfishness is dividing us. Selfishness always divides. Selflessness always unites. But again, you can’t legislate selflessness. You can’t legislate kind or patient. You can’t legislate others first. You can’t legislate the golden rule. Those are choices. So let’s choose them. Let’s obey the law, exercise our rights. But let’s not stop there. Let’s be more than law abiding rights demanding citizens. Let’s refuse to leverage our freedoms, our rights, who indulge ourselves at the expense of other people. Let’s refuse to exercise our rights in a way that harm or infringe upon the rights of other people. Instead, let’s look for opportunities to serve one another. Let’s participate politically, but let’s go the extra mile. Let’s live responsibly. So is our national experiment with democracy still working? It certainly can work if we, the people will work it. So let’s get to work. Thanks for listening to this special post-election episode. We will be returning to our regular format next week, so be sure to join us right here on the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast.

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