I live in the woods in central Alabama. A dirt road runs in front of my house. When it rains, the road gets muddy.

Woods, isolation, mud…great ingredients that invite idiots to recklessly tear up the road and throw out trash. I realize some will object to my use of the term “idiot.” Please substitute the word of your choice.

Here’s what happens. It rains. The road gets soft and muddy. You know it’s going to happen. It’s like a magnet. Folks driving trucks with mud tires and four-wheelers cannot resist coming through and seeing how much damage they can do (driving way too fast). I suppose there must be some euphoria in almost getting stuck (and sometimes actually getting stuck) to the rims of your vehicle. I’m just not there.

Of course, after the idiots leave with the damage in their wake, the folks who live on the road are left to try to navigate the ruts in the road until the county comes (3 or 4 times per year) to level the road again.

At least the trucks and four-wheelers typically mess up the road ONLY when there is mud after a rain. Not so for the litterbugs. For a litterbug, their only constraints are when they finish their big macs or their bud lights. For you see, when they are finished, they simply toss the trash indiscriminately out the window. For these idiots, the whole world is their garbage can.

I’ve often thought about the scenario of EVERYONE, all of us, throwing trash EVERY TIME we travelled. Can you imagine? It is beyond me that someone cannot toss the beer can or bottle in the floorboard of the car and put it in a trash can at home. I will never understand why someone chooses to violate another’s space by tossing trash.

But I do have a theory about both muddy road makers and litterbugs.

We live in a time when it seems as if everything concerns my rights. “You cannot take away my right to ______________.” I’m assuming that includes the perceived right to deface a public road and to dump trash on that roadside. “I have the right to do what I want to do when I want to do. It’s my freedom.”

Well, technically they are correct. Isn’t it nice to live in freedom? I really can do whatever I want to do. Of course, there are consequences for my actions. However, those consequences don’t always affect me. If I want to dump garbage along the roadside and if no one can identify that I am the one who did it, I guess I got away with it. I have left it for someone else to clean up.

But here’s where the rubber hits the road, so to speak. I looked up a Pew Research Center survey to see how many people in Alabama consider themselves to be Christian. Are you ready for this? 86% of Alabamians call themselves Christian. 86%!!!!!!! I knew I lived in the buckle of the Bible belt, but WOW!!

So, if we continue along these lines of thinking, it would make sense that a great percentage of folks who drive on the dirt road in front of my house would call themselves Christian. Why, then, must I ask, would a Christian intentionally tear up a public road and/or toss garbage all over the place? For you see, freedom should mean something different for the Christian.

Consider the words of Paul in Galatians 5:

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.  For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.

All of us could certainly use a lesson in self-indulgence. But since I’m talking about the litterbugs and mudbugs, let’s stay with those examples. It just seems to me, that, if one takes seriously the calling of Christ and the admonition of Paul, one would not indulge oneself by trashing someone else’s roadside. Nor would one simply tear up a dirt road in a reckless fashion presumably because the road is there and is for the taking. You would think the Christian would stop and think, “Is this loving someone else like I love myself?” “Is this making me subservient to another person?” And yet, I am virtually certain this does not enter the mind of the litterbug or the mudbug.

Nor, I’m afraid, does it enter the mind of the one who chooses not to be vaccinated. It’s one thing to throw a beer bottle or a pizza box out the car window or to make six-inch ruts in a public dirt road. It’s a very different thing to insist that the most scrutinized vaccine in the history of vaccines is not to be trusted.

Truly, I thought we were over this discussion (see my blog on wearing masks). But it seems that many in the same crowd that refuse to wear masks also refuse to get the vaccine. And most of the arguments are the “freedom” types of arguments. “You cannot make me do anything to my body.” “My body–my choice.” (Of course, many in this group need to remember this moment when they lash out at the woman who says the same thing about her body in regard to abortion.)

It certainly is one’s right to not be vaccinated. One has the freedom to say no. And Alabama, not surprisingly, has the lowest vaccination rate in the country. But remember the 86% of Alabamians who call themselves Christian? To the Christian I ask, “Where does your freedom end?” Are there limits to the freedom that Christians enjoy? Based on scripture, the answer would be a resounding “yes.”

My freedom in Christ DOES NOT permit me self-indulgence to the extent that I trample on those around me. My freedom in Christ DOES NOT mean that I have the right to do what I want when I want.

Why? Because freedom in Christ necessarily involves loving our neighbors. (If you have a question about to whom Jesus is referring as neighbor, please google “the good Samaritan.”) Freedom in Christ necessarily involves being willing to put the needs of others over and beyond my own needs.

We, as Christians, hold the Bible in high regard. Over 90% of American families have a Bible in the home. We say we believe what we read in the Bible. Maybe we should read it more often.