Dear Houston

Houston, you have a problem

Freedom is being ravaged in your city while tyranny and oppression have parked in your government.

And you are attacking my brothers!

Let me speak while the first amendment has yet to be amended.

I love my country, but I am tired of this American cynical serpent making sinners out of servants. Your flag flies high, but it is not red, white and blue and your freedom is not freedom, it’s status!

We seem to live in a world where we have afforded so much freedom that people now fight and clamor to once again become subjects to one another or to subject brother to brother.

Annise fought for freedom to love, then subpoenaed that freedom when she subjected another to her own execration, the very execration she fought to detach from herself. Freedom in your city, oh Houston, is a mockery and this cynical serpent is now not only making sinners, but slaves in a free land. Our fathers did not free us so that we could ourselves become tyrants.

Brothers, stand tall. This is not the end; in fact the persecution is only beginning. Continue preaching that it is for freedom’s sake that we have been set free in Christ’s name! Continue to offer healthy critiques of this western culture. For, if there is no critic, how can one see his faults? Oh the faults that have parked on your doorstep, oh Houston.

I am less free than I was yesterday. In this, “land of the free” I no longer have a choice as to whether or not I want to insure my own health. America the great has traded freedom for apparent safety and for a false idea of an unachievable coexistence. People once moved here for freedom, but Lady Liberty has lost her shine. I guess Houston is only an image of the same dull, green freedom that America now holds for all of its people.

Houston, we have a problem.

“For you were called to be free, brothers; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love. For the entire law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another. I say then, walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I tell you about these things in advance — as I told you before — that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self- control. Against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, we must also follow the Spirit. We must not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.”[1]

[1] Galatians 5:13-26 (HCSB)