If our rights and freedoms are created by human beings, from legislatures, from judges, or from majority votes, then they can be taken away by human beings at any time.
What one generation grants, the next can revoke. What seems like a fundamental right today can be deemed outdated tomorrow.
Rights based on human opinion are just temporary agreements, subject to the shifting winds of collective emotion and cultural fashion.
But if our rights come from a source eternal and unchanging, outside of human whim and beyond human authority—then they cannot be legislated away. They are unalienable. This is why the Founding Fathers anchored our rights not in governmental generosity but in our Creator.
The First Amendment protects our freedom of religion and speech because these freedoms reflect divine, eternal principles—our capacity to seek truth, to worship our Creator, to speak what we believe.
The Second Amendment exists because defending God-given rights requires the means to do so. These aren't just legal provisions. They are acknowledgments that our rights have a foundation that government cannot create and therefore cannot destroy. If we throw these away, then we throw away the governmental authority built on this foundation.
Having rights on paper means nothing if we lack the will and capacity to defend them.
When government officials deemed religious worship "nonessential" while marijuana dispensaries remained open, we saw how quickly freedoms can evaporate—even in America.
And it's not just government overreach we face. There are forces in this world incessantly striving to destroy our freedoms, our faith, and our families. These forces are real, they are relentless, and they require us to be immovable. We must be willing to stand—even when the costs of standing are high, even when others may choose to be angry, even if giving our lives is necessary.
Defending our constitutional rights is necessary but not sufficient. There is something that can destroy our freedom far more than governmental tyranny. It's the bondage we create ourselves through our pride, our grievances, our wounds, and our sins.
Think about the conflicts in your life—in your family, your workplace, your community, our nation. We come to these conflicts carrying our pain and justifications. And here's the problem: we each have a conflict of interest in negotiating on our own behalf.
In our weakness and frailty, we cannot see clearly. We're wounded and biased. Though there are clear trends of violence among those attacking our faith, families, and freedoms, we're not completely innocent ourselves, regardless of our beliefs and values, so we cannot entirely claim the moral high ground. We lack a real awareness of what others have experienced. And even when we try to be fair, we're limited by our own perspective, our own pain, and our own pride.
This is true individually, and it's true collectively. It's why political compromise so often fails. It's why peace treaties break down. It's why families fracture. We're all negotiating from positions of imperfection, and none of us can claim to be without blame.
The world tries to offer solutions, but these solutions cannot address the root problem—that every human trying to mediate is themselves compromised. Every human judge has their own biases. Every arbitrator brings their own baggage.
And here's where the world fundamentally misunderstands what’s been given to us.
The world wants to tell us that faith in Jesus Christ is a right-wing idea, a political position, a tribal marker for conservatives. But this is a catastrophic misreading of who He is.
Jesus Christ suffered the pains and grievances of everyone—Republican and Democrat, conservative and progressive, right wing and left wing.
He experienced the agony of the victim and the shame of the perpetrator. His atonement encompasses all. He is the only true centrist—not because He refuses to take a stand for truth, but because He took all of our suffering upon Himself.
We need someone outside the conflict, someone without a conflict of interest, someone perfectly just and perfectly merciful.
But it can't be just any third party. It must be someone who truly knows our grievances—not intellectually, but experientially. And this is why there is no one other than Jesus Christ. In Gethsemane and on Calvary, He didn't just observe our suffering—He experienced our suffering. Every injustice, every betrayal, every wound, and every shame that any of us has ever carried or inflicted, He bore it all.
He knows what you've suffered because He felt it Himself. He knows what you've done to others because He carried that weight too. He has no bias because He took all sides upon Himself. And He alone is without sin, which means He alone can mediate a settlement that is truly just and truly merciful.
Without accepting Him and His sacrifice, we remain in these little prisons of isolation that we build for ourselves,
with our shame, and our pride, and our wounds, and our inability to truly forgive or be forgiven. We cannot see others clearly because we cannot see ourselves clearly. We cannot extend mercy because we have not truly received it. We cannot unite because we're still divided within ourselves.
But when we accept Christ as our mediator, something miraculous happens. The shame that isolated us is lifted. The pride that blinded us is broken.
Alma 34: 13. Therefore, it is expedient that there should be a great and last sacrifice, and then shall there be, or it is expedient there should be, a stop to the shedding of blood…
15 And thus he shall bring salvation to all those who shall believe on his name; this being the intent of this last sacrifice, to bring about the bowels of mercy, which overpowereth justice, and bringeth about means unto men that they may have faith unto repentance. (and I would add unto freedom, true freedom)
We receive the power to forgive because we've been forgiven. We can pursue justice because we've experienced it. We can extend love even to those who extend hate to us, because we've received a love we didn't deserve.
Yes, we must defend our freedoms. Yes, we must be vigilant against governmental corruption. Yes, we must be willing to stand—even when it costs us everything.
We must stand for truth and freedom and faith with immovable courage, while simultaneously extending love to everyone we encounter—even those who oppose us, even those who respond with anger or violence.
If Jesus Christ suffered and died for all, then all deserve our love, even when they don't deserve our agreement. We can be immovable in our principles while being generous in our love. We can defend truth fiercely while treating those who oppose truth with dignity.
This is not a political program. This is a call to a higher way—the only way that can actually preserve our freedoms in the long term. Freedoms defended by people who love their enemies, who speak truth, who stand on immovable principles while extending movable grace—these freedoms endure.
For too long and our society we have avoided real, meaningful discussions about what we've put in little boxes labelled “religion” and “politics”.
What I'm saying to you here tonight is not about religion or politics. It's about civics. It's about our ability to peacefully coexist with each other both in the short term and in the long term.
Our nation was founded on the recognition that rights come from God. But it can only be preserved by people who accept God's Mediator. Because without Christ, we'll tear each other apart in our conflicts, even within our own parties and communities. Without Christ, our rights will remain words on paper that we lack the moral foundation to defend.
With Christ as our source of unchanging moral truth and as our Mediator in every conflict—we can defend our families, our faith, and our freedoms with the kind of courage that comes from being anchored. We can face the forces that seek to destroy what we hold sacred, knowing that the One who mediates for us all has already overcome the world.
This is the only path to lasting freedom—freedom founded on eternal truth, defended with courage, and exercised through love. This is the freedom our Founding Fathers envisioned. This is the freedom worth dying for. And this is the freedom that only Jesus Christ, the Great Mediator, can ultimately secure.
~ Schott Taylor