If you were to get on a search engine right now and type in "monument in Plymouth", the first thing you might notice is the picture of a large statue that you have probably never seen before. The first result would probably be a Wikipedia page called "National Monument to our Forefathers". Click that Wikipedia link and you will find a description of a monument dedicated to the memory of the Mayflower Pilgrims. Right about now you may be asking yourself one of a few questions including "Why have I never heard of this?" or maybe, "Why do I even care?".

It may surprise you to know that the monument in Plymouth was not built to commemorate those Pilgrims at all! The name given to the beautiful landmark implies that it was built to remind us of the accomplishments and ideals of the Mayflower Pilgrims, but this is an intentional misdirection. I am not implying that Wikipedia or any other modern text is deliberately lying; they are only passing along history as it has been handed down to them. What I am saying is that at some point in time, the story behind that monument was changed and then hidden. That is why, at almost thirty-three years old, I only learned about this great American landmark for the first time this week. That alone is an absolute travesty! I went to American schools my whole life. I took American history in college. Not once has an instructor or teacher ever mentioned that statue, which represents all that America once held dear.

That monument is more than a simple reminder that the Pilgrims once came here full of high ideals! That monument is a reminder of not only what those hopes and dreams were, but how they can be achieved in the real world! The Pilgrims were not a group of rigid do-gooders who ran away from England with their tails between their legs! These were some of the most persevering and thick-skinned people that have ever lived! They fought their way through hardships that most of us cannot even imagine and they sacrificed almost everything to give us our freedom! They were imprisoned, burned to death, or forced to hide for years at a time.They watched their wives and children and husbands as they were dragged away, or as they froze to death in the wilderness! Through all of this death and terror, they pressed on. They never wavered! These men and women were a shining example of what every American should strive to be! That goes double for American Christians. They set out against the world with nothing but a Bible and a dream, and they won! They found a way to build a nation that offers freedom from the religious tyranny of people that believe that morality comes from men and must be forced upon the masses.

The Pilgrims knew the truth, that morality is a God-given gift and it must be freely chosen if it is to benefit the individual. That is a Biblical principal and they wanted a nation built on that solid foundation. The monument is the blueprint that shows exactly how to construct that nation. Starting with faith and ending with liberty, that monument tells us that is is the free gifts from God that must be used to construct a nation of freedom, not the lazy and childish ideals of modern America. Today we believe that everyone in America has a right to not only live any lifestyle, which is technically correct, but also a right to force it down the throats of everyone else. This flies in the face of everything we have ever fought for!If you believe that everyone is entitled to tolerate anything you choose to be and do, then you are as anti-American as anyone has ever been.

The Pilgrims dreamed of a world where everyone was free to choose his or her own path, not a world where everyone was free to live completely outside of morality. They wanted the Bible taught to American children, not because they hoped to indoctrinate them, but because they wanted them to grow into men and women that knew how to love and knew how to take a stand against tyranny in all of its forms. The form that tyranny takes today is one that looks an awful lot like freedom, but it is a lie. Being free to live as an open homosexual is not being free at all. We have built a prison around ourselves and painted a sky and rolling fields on the inner walls. We did such a fine job with the painting that we have forgotten that there is an actual sky out there beyond those walls. We believe that if we simply paint something onto those walls, homosexuality, abortion, debauchery, that those things become part of what it means to be free. The truth is, if we were to tore down that wall of self-deception, we would see that God has already built a fine world that had all the freedom you could ever hope to enjoy while protecting us from dangerous and destructive possibilities. In the world that God designed, everyone is truly free and can live as they please. The beauty of it is that you always receive the reward or the consequences of your choices. If you plant, something will grow. If you choose to ignore morality, you will have a short life of shallow fun and then die with nothing. That may sound harsh but it is reality. Even inside this prison of mock freedom we will eventually die and we will answer for the lives we lived. The Pilgrims understood this and they wanted us to remember how to build a land that offered both freedom and reality!

Our founders once took on the world and won without firing a single shot. We can do the same if we are willing to lay down our lives for truth and freedom. We must turn our back on the federal government as long as it goes on trying to dictate its own sense of morality. The God above all kings and governments has already given us the truth and any attempt to redefine it will only end in disaster, just as it always has. The men that witnessed the fall of every great nation before us could tell you that it always starts with something that looks just like freedom, but it is actually just a complete lack of accountability. They are not one and the same. The Pilgrims never wanted this for us, they wanted freedom for us. They laid down their lives so that we could freely choose God over ourselves.