At noon ET today, Joey Chestnut will attempt to retain his title in Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. Approximately thirty-five thousand fans are expected to convene on New York’s Coney Island to watch. Chestnut is the top male hot dog eating champion of all time, having won the title fifteen times. He holds the world record for eating seventy-six hot dogs in ten minutes.

Chestnut will receive $10,000 if he wins again, but he says his net worth exceeds $4 million. Most of his income is generated by contest earnings, paid appearances, and endorsement deals.

If you’re saying, “Only in America,” you’re right, at least in sentiment. Imagine someone becoming a millionaire by eating hot dogs in Russia or China, Cuba or North Korea.

Our ethos is built on five words in our founding declaration: “All men are created equal.” While America still has far to go to fulfill this creed, the independence we celebrate today and the impact we have made on human history demonstrate its transformative power.

Ukraine’s president wishes America a happy birthday

In a July 2 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, “Happy Birthday, America,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky writes: “America’s Founders upended history when they forged a republic based on individual freedom and political pluralism, pledging to live as ‘free and independent states.’ It was, and is, the greatest attempt in history to rid mankind of tyranny. They broke with centuries of subservience to create a new type of nation, one where all are equal and live free.”

Forty-two years ago, another president gave voice to the significance of this day in words that repay reading today. In his commencement address on May 17, 1981, at the University of Notre Dame, President Ronald Reagan noted:

This Nation was born when a band of men, the Founding Fathers, a group so unique we’ve never seen their like since, rose to . . . selfless heights. Lawyers, tradesmen, merchants, farmers—fifty-six men achieved security and standing in life but valued freedom more. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Sixteen of them gave their lives. Most gave their fortunes. All preserved their sacred honor.

They gave us more than a nation. They brought to all mankind for the first time the concept that man was born free, that each of us has inalienable rights, ours by the grace of God, and that government was created by us for our convenience, having only the powers that we choose to give it.

Then President Reagan placed our democracy in historical context:

This experiment in man’s relation to man is a few years into its third century. Saying that may make it sound quite old. But let’s look at it from another viewpoint or perspective. A few years ago, someone figured out that if you could condense the entire history of life on Earth into a motion picture that would run for 24 hours a day, 365 days . . . this idea that is the United States wouldn’t appear on the screen until 3½ seconds before midnight on December 31^st.

And in those 3½ seconds not only would a new concept of society come into being, a golden hope for all mankind, but more than half the activity, economic activity in world history, would take place on this continent. Free to express their genius, individual Americans, men and women in 3½ seconds would perform such miracles of invention, construction, and production as the world had never seen.

“One day this nation will rise up”

All of that because America believes that “all men are created equal.”

• All men prohibits all exclusions, racial or otherwise.
• Are is in the present tense and thus includes you and me.
• Created points to our identity and status as created by God “in his own image” (Genesis 1:27).
• Equal means that each of us is as valuable as all of us.

However, as I admitted earlier, this promise is far from fulfilled. This is because, as I noted yesterday, there is only so much that human words and laws can do to change our fallen human nature.

The good news is that the good news of the gospel can do what no other news can.

Consider Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee so blinded by religious and racial bigotry that he sought the deaths of the Gentile Christians he persecuted (cf. Acts 22:4). But Jesus so changed his heart that he would later testify, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

As we celebrate America’s birth today, let’s renew our commitment to sharing this good news that produces the spiritual birth Americans need so desperately. Let’s thank our Father for the gift of liberty our Founding Fathers have given us, then let’s use that gift to pray and work for a spiritual awakening that will transform our people and thus our nation.

Then this country we love will fulfill the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “One day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” And politically, ethnically, and most of all spiritually, we will be “free at last.”

“When great causes are on the move”

In his commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, President Reagan included this observation: “Winston Churchill, during the darkest period of the ‘Battle of Britain’ in World War II, said: ‘When great causes are on the move in the world . . . we learn we are spirits, not animals, and that something is going on in space and time, and beyond space and time, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.’”

Will you do your spiritual duty for America today?

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In good news for evangelical Christians, the US Supreme Court sided last Friday with Colorado web designer Lorie Smith, who claimed a First Amendment right to refuse to design wedding websites for same-sex couples.

Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom brought the case to the court and said after the ruling, “Disagreement isn’t discrimination, and the government can’t mislabel speech as discrimination to censor it.” She added: “This is a win for all Americans. The government should no more censor [her client] for speaking consistent with her beliefs about marriage than it should punish an LGBT graphic designer for declining to criticize same-sex marriage. If we desire freedom for ourselves, we must defend it for others.”

From good news to tragedy: an eighteen-year-old woman and a twenty-year-old man were killed in a mass shooting early Sunday morning at a Baltimore block party. Twenty-eight others were injured; three are in critical condition this morning. Just two days into July, this was one of three mass shootings in the month and one of 338 mass shootings in the US this year.

Meanwhile, mass riots are gripping France following Tuesday’s shooting of a teenager by a police officer. Forty-five thousand police were deployed and more than seven hundred people were arrested by early Sunday. One historian said of the rioters, “They’re destroying the social compact which is essential for democracy.”

The Battle of Gettysburg ended on this day

There is no gift that cannot be misused, including the gift of freedom.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed: “Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.” However, his assassination tragically demonstrated that behavior can only be regulated and restrained to a point. Human laws cannot change human hearts.

The Battle of Gettysburg, the most decisive conflict of the American Civil War, ended on this day in 1863. But it would be more than a hundred years before the Civil Rights Act would prohibit discrimination in employment and education and outlaw racial segregation in public places.

Like every other form of freedom, religious freedom can be misused. Having religious liberty includes the liberty to reject religion, a choice Americans are increasingly making. God made us to love him and each other (Matthew 22:37–39), but love is a choice which, by definition, requires the freedom to choose. Consequently, our Creator honors the freedom he gives us even when we misuse that freedom in tragic ways.

“An example to all the believers”

As our nation approaches our Independence Day celebration, today’s reflections have been prompted by a verse I read recently as part of my personal Bible study. Every time I see it, it strikes a chord deep within me: “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3).

The moral and spiritual foundations upon which our republic was built are under greater threat than ever before in American history. What, then, “can the righteous do?”

To answer the psalmist’s question, consider Paul’s testimony to the Thessalonian Christians: “Our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction” (1 Thessalonians 1:5a). Paul and his missionary team not only preached biblical truth, but they also modeled it personally: “You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake” (v. 5b).

Consequently, “You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia” (vv. 6–7) and “your faith in God has gone forth everywhere” (v. 8).

When Christians declare biblical truth and model it personally, the Holy Spirit uses our words and witness to lead others to share our faith. Then these believers become examples to others in word and witness so that the gospel movement multiplies, changing the culture and, eventually, the world (cf. Acts 17:6).

The gospel in horse taxis

On this July 3, I am grateful to live in a nation that honors my freedom of religion, but I know that America’s hope does not lie with America’s laws. If God’s people will choose to declare and defend biblical truth, wherever we are and whatever the consequences, God’s Spirit will use God’s word to change hearts and transform nations.

I am thinking today of a Cuban pastor for whom I pray every morning. He is one of the most godly and courageous believers I have ever met. I received word a few days ago that he was on his way to a meeting of one hundred churches in his region that will participate in his ministry’s Vacation Bible Schools.

However, Cuba is facing its most dire fuel shortage in years, with lines stretching for blocks even at gas stations where there has been no fuel for days. So Carlos and his colleagues traveled to the conference in horse-drawn taxis.

Oswald Chambers noted, “When we choose deliberately to obey God, then he will tax the remotest star and the last grain of sand to assist us.”

Is your omnipotent Lord waiting on you today?

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The US Supreme Court issued two landmark rulings yesterday. One struck down affirmative action, declaring the consideration of race in university admissions to be unconstitutional. According to the Wall Street Journal, the high court’s ruling against racial preferences means “admissions offices now must decide where racial diversity ranks among priorities that can include academic performance, achievement in extracurricular activities such as athletics, and preferences for alumni and donors.”

Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts stated, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” He added, “The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race. Many universities have for too long done just the opposite.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented: “The Court ignores the dangerous consequences of an America where its leadership does not reflect the diversity of the people.”

If you were on the Court, how would you balance our founding declaration that “all men are created equal” with the consequences of racial discrimination across our history?

The other ruling sided with an evangelical Christian worker who was denied requests to take Sundays off from his post office job to observe his Sabbath. The unanimous opinion made it more difficult for employers to deny religious workplace rights, as Justice Samuel Alito stated:  “An employer must show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.” This is a significant victory for religious liberty in America.

However, some worry that the ruling could give employees more leeway to exercise their personal religious views even if they are inconsistent with those held by their employers or colleagues. Should a Jehovah’s Witness who works at a hospital be able to withhold a blood transfusion on religious grounds? Should a Muslim be able to stop for daily prayers even if this disrupts other workers and hinders workplace productivity?

Asked differently, does the ruling violate the First Amendment’s promise that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”? Or does it uphold the promise not to prohibit “the free exercise thereof”?

If you were on the Court, how would you balance the two?

“The boundaries between spheres are collapsing”

Yesterday’s rulings demonstrate the problem of competing constitutional values in a democratic republic. And they illustrate an even larger narrative at work in our culture today.

New York Times columnist David Brooks recently highlighted the thinking of the early-twentieth-century Dutch prime minister and theologian Abraham Kuyper, who observed that there are a variety of spheres, each with its own social function. Brooks explained that there is the state, the church, the family, the schools, science, business, and so on. Kuyper noted that each of these spheres has its own rules and possesses its own integrity and way of doing things.

Brooks writes: “Society grows unhealthy, Kuyper argued, when one sphere tries to take over another sphere. In our country, the business sphere has sometimes tried to take over the education sphere—to run schools like a business. But if you run a school or university on the profit-maximization mentality, you will trample over the mission of what a school is for—the cultivation of the student, the mission of pure research.”

According to Brooks, “Today, the boundaries between spheres are collapsing. You go into an evangelical megachurch and it can feel like a political pep rally. Some professors now see themselves as political activists. You open your email and find corporations taking political stances on issues that have nothing to do with their core businesses.

“Some days it seems every sphere has been subsumed into one giant culture war.”

How evangelicals feel as Pride Month ends

This concept of social “spheres” is vital to our flourishing as a democratic republic. However, these spheres often overlap, as when a university tries to balance the equality of an individual with the consequences of racial discrimination or a worker claims religious rights in secular employment.

At such times, inevitably one “side” will think it lost the legal and cultural battle.

This is precisely where many evangelical Christians find ourselves as Pride Month ends. We agree that LGBTQ individuals have civil rights and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. But we have civil rights as well.

We do not want our children exposed to incessant attempts to normalize unbiblical immorality. And we do not want to be branded as bigoted and hateful for upholding moral positions that have been upheld for all of Judeo-Christian history and are still the majority position in much of the world.

But remember this: If Jesus is your Lord, this world is not your home. On the contrary, “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20). You are an “ambassador” for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20), representing your king in this foreign land.

Christ “is Sovereign over all”

The Supreme Court is generating headlines around the world, but your next act of faithful obedience will echo in heaven. The culture wars are dominating our culture, but you cannot measure the eternal significance of present faithfulness.

Here is where another assertion by Abraham Kuyper, one omitted in Brooks’ article, is essential: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not exclaim, ‘Mine!’”

Can he say the same of your life and obedience today?

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