"B Inspired" Begins Season Six with Call for Action: Adjust Focus on Freedom

by jane Stahl

"If unbridled greed is accepted as success, freedom isn't working. If the earth is poisoned and its resources depleted, freedom isn't working. If people are treated as sex objects...if racial and ethnic hatreds are countenanced...if people turn to drugs and alcohol...if people cheat 'because everyone cheats,' freedom isn't working."

In B Inspired's  "encore episode,"--released during its fledgling 2020 season--I share a "Letter from God to the People" and my own reflections, penned 25 years ago, that resonate more today than ever before in our nation's history.

The letter, offered by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America published in Newsweek magazine suggests that it may be time to revise our understanding of the gift of Freedom our Founding Fathers meant as our birthright.

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Dear People,
I offer you a gift. I hope you will accept it. Linked with the gift is a burden.

I hope you can handle it. My gift is freedom.

It means that each of you can do just about anything—say anything, use, build, or destroy anything within your grasp.

But wait—I’m giving this gift to all of you, every women, man, and child, every race and every nation.

Ah, you see the difficulty: if all of you are to be free, each of you will have to put limits on your own actions—otherwise you’ll wind up with misery, crime, chaos, and tyranny. Everything you make will be broken; every place you go will be dangerous. Only a few will be “free,” and they’ll really be enslaved to their greed and their fear of everyone else.

That’s the burden linked with the gift: self-restraint.

I’m asking a lot of you. You have to make freedom work.
If unbridled greed is accepted as success, it isn’t working.
If the earth is poisoned and its resources depleted, it isn’t working. If people are treated as sex objects, it isn’t working.
If racist and ethnic hatreds are countenanced, it isn’t working.
If people turn to drugs and alcohol, it isn’t working.
If people cheat “because everyone cheats,” it isn’t working.

And if it isn’t working, the responsibility to fix it belongs to every one of you.

Unless all of you use your freedom with restraint, everyone’s liberty will weaken and die. No one can be free alone.

This isn’t going to be easy. But it will help if you remember that the world doesn’t revolve around you. It will help if you remember who gave you this gift.

With love, God

Find the "B Inspired" podcast on your favorite podcast platform. And if you're inspired to respond, know that we'd be pleased to receive your thoughts in a guest column. 

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