How Are You Stewarding the Freedoms You've Been Given?
Next Saturday, the United States turns 250 years old.
Two and a half centuries since a group of men signed a document declaring that a new kind of country would exist, one founded on the idea that human beings have certain inalienable rights and that the role of government is to protect them. It's an experiment that has been remarkable, complicated, costly, and far from perfect. But it's still standing 250 years later, and that's worth acknowledging.
I want to be clear that this isn't a political essay. Different sides of the political spectrum claim freedom as something their side understands better. That conversation has plenty of voices already, and I’m not adding to it. What I'm interested in is something more personal and practical, which is what each of us is actually doing with the freedoms we've been given.
Because freedom is a gift, and gifts that aren't stewarded become wasted ones.
A Brief Personal Note
Before I go further, I want to acknowledge something that shapes how I think about this topic.
From 2001 to 2006, I served in the U.S. Navy as a submariner and a diver. I'm not going to turn this essay into a recounting of my service, because that's not what this is about. But I think it's worth saying out loud that I'm not coming at the idea of freedom abstractly. I've worn the uniform of the country that defends it, and I've seen personally what it actually requires for a country to protect what it claims to value.
My time in the Navy didn't make me more patriotic in a surface-level sense, but it did provide me a real-life opportunity to see how rare and precious the freedoms we enjoy actually are. Most countries throughout history have not had what we have (and most still don't), and the version of life we get to live in America is not the default. It's the result of two and a half centuries of choices, sacrifice, and stewardship by people who refused to take it for granted.
The Costs of Freedom
You don't get a country like the USA without paying for it.
The founders risked everything they had to sign the Declaration of Independence. Most of them lost their wealth, their reputations, or their lives in the years that followed. The Revolutionary War was not a polite disagreement. It was a brutal, drawn-out conflict where ordinary farmers and tradesmen left their homes to fight for a new way of life, and many of them gave their lives for it.
Every generation since has paid its own price. The Civil War. Two World Wars. Korea. Vietnam. The Gulf. Afghanistan. Iraq. Every conflict carries a list of names of people who left and didn't return, and behind every flag-draped coffin is a family that received a folded triangle and a quiet thank you from a country that owes them more than it can ever give back.
And the cost isn't limited to the military. There are people who fought for civil rights, for women's suffrage, for religious liberty, for the slow expansion of the original promise to people who were initially excluded from it. America at 250 years old is not what America was at 50 years old, and the difference is the result of people who refused to let injustice stand and who paid for that refusal with their time, their reputations, and sometimes their lives.
The reality is that freedom isn’t free. That’s not a cliche. It’s the hard truth that preserving freedom has costs, and hundreds of thousands of people are living proof of that cost. The question now is what we’re doing to honor that sacrifice.
The Costs of Misusing Freedom
There’s a second cost we don’t talk about on the 4th of July. It’s the cost of recognizing the freedoms we have, and then misusing them through lives of autopilot, drift, or inaction.
This is where freedom becomes a BFAP question. What I’ve been writing about across this entire body of work is the gap between what you’ve been given and what you’re doing with it.
Career. You have the freedom to choose your work, change it, or build something new. Most people in most places throughout most of history did not have this freedom. Are you using that freedom or wasting it?
Relationships. You have the freedom to marry who you choose, raise your children how you see fit, and build a community around you. Are those relationships getting your attention, or are they coasting on the assumption of permanence?
Spiritual Habits. You have the freedom to worship, to read scripture, to gather with others who share your faith, or to abandon all of it if you want to. Many countries imprison people for exercising religious freedom. Are you treating your religious freedom like a gift or like an afterthought?
Fitness. You have the freedom to care for your body through more resources than any previous generation had access to. Are you stewarding your fitness or telling yourself you'll get to it later?
Diet. You have access to more variety, quality, and abundance of food than any generation that came before you. Are you using that freedom of abundance to fuel a healthy life, or are you falling to the trap of treating food only as pleasure?
Finances. You have the freedom to earn, save, spend, give, and invest in ways that many other societies would dream of. Are your financial habits reflecting that, or are you sleepwalking through your financial choices?
Hobbies and Rest. You have discretionary time that most of human history would consider a luxury. Are you using it to grow, restore, and/or connect, or are you defaulting largely to passive consumption?
These aren't theoretical freedoms. They're the actual texture and rhythm of your daily life. And the question is the same across all of the pillars: are you exercising the freedom you've been given, or are you operating on autopilot or misusing your freedom entirely?
The Stewardship Question
So here's what I'm asking you to sit with this 4th of July.
Freedom is not just a possession of something you’ve been afforded. It’s a responsibility. The freedoms you've inherited from 250 years of people who paid for them are yours to steward. And stewardship requires attention, intention, and the kind of honest self-examination that many people avoid.
If you find yourself feeling defensive reading this, that's worth paying attention to, because defensiveness often shows up when someone has named something true that you weren't ready to admit. The reflexive "I'm doing fine" is the same response that keeps so many people stuck in patterns they would have changed years ago if they'd been willing to look deeper.
Look honestly at your life. Pick one area where you’ve been taking your freedom for granted. Then ask yourself what it would look like to actually steward that freedom this year.
I’m not asking you to strive for perfection, and I’m not asking you to have it all figured out tomorrow. I want you to recognize the freedoms you have been given, and then do something about it.
So this 4th of July, when the fireworks go off and the grills are running and the flags are out, by all means celebrate. The 250th birthday of this country is worth celebrating, the people who fought for it are worth honoring, and the gift we've inherited is worth being grateful for.
But during and after the celebration, ask the harder question.
What are you actually doing with the freedoms you've been given?
Because gratitude without responsibility is just sentiment. And the freedoms you have, the ones that millions of people throughout history would have given anything to possess, deserve more than sentiment.
They deserve a life lived intentionally.
