To the Class of 2008 (Part 1 of 4)

Following is the first of four blogs comprising a graduation speech delivered by Miss Dang to the Class of 2008 of American Christian Academy Extension Campus in California.

Part 1: of a 4-part series

We come each year to commencement ceremonies always with a thankful heart to God for His faithfulness and goodness to preserve, protect, and provide our families and our nation with another generation to carry forward the legacy of Christian liberty — Christ’s liberty which sets the individual soul free from the demoralizing chains of sin and degradation, then to enable him to live by faith in the power of Christ’s ability to govern from within man’s inward propensity toward unbelief, disobedience and sin.

Liberty is born of Christ’s Spirit; to the glory of the power of Christ in the life of the individual that Spirit moved and prevailed over the ages of time, traversed across continents, and planted itself as a vine of Christian liberty in the soil of the American wilderness. This vine of Christian liberty grew into a republic — a republic unlike any other in the history of the world, having as its cornerstone the principle of individual self-government. History testifies that Providence reserved America for a people with a capacity for self-government, for a people who believed God and who would be guided by His Word in their personal lives, in their homes, in their churches, in their businesses, and in their local and national spheres of government.

Dear graduates, you have inherited six kinds of liberty. Not only may you avail yourselves of Christ’s liberty of salvation from the law of sin and death, but also, because you are American Christians, you have as well, with un-persecuted Christianity, a liberty of conscience, a Christian conscience free from offenses both toward God and man; religious liberty, freedom from the belief of another; economic liberty, freedom to enjoy the fruits of your own labor; civil liberty, freedom from the intrusion of the state into one’s life and livelihood; and political liberty, freedom from the control of another nation. You have inherited a responsibility for the stewardship of these six liberties, an inheritance of the greatest individual liberty ever known to mankind.

Should you, however, ever separate your Christianity from your country and thus neglect your individual responsibility to maintain these liberties by exercising the government of Christ in you, these liberties will begin diminishing by degrees. Civil government is God’s idea. It was instituted by God for the security of the life, liberty, and property He gives to every individual and for the just punishment of those who would do harm to them. Civil government was not instituted as the fountain of all earthly good and neither did God institute civil government to take the place of His personal government over the individual. Man was created to be governed by God alone; if not by self-government, then by civil government.

To be continued…

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