Stephen Spielberg is at it again. Frequently controversial, his latest film is no exception—a SciFi movie about things from another world. Reactions to it range from genius to heresy. But occasionally he drops a movie-moment that simply soars. Such was the climatic speech in his movie Amistad (1997), where the screenwriters inserted their two-bits into an actual speech delivered before the U.S, Supreme Court by aged former president and statesman John Quincy Adams—and gave the audience something profound to ponder.

The scene: As he addresses the Justices, Adams (brilliantly played by Sir Anthony Hopkins) turns to a row of statues in the chamber—of America’s Founding Fathers, and speaks to them as if they were also listening—living witnesses to his pivotal case. He said to them,

‘James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington…John Adams. We’ve long resisted asking you for guidance. Perhaps we have feared in doing so, we might acknowledge that our individuality, which we so, so revere, is not entirely our own. Perhaps we’ve feared an…an appeal to you might be taken for weakness. But we’ve come to understand, finally, that this is not so. We understand now—we’ve been made to understand and to embrace the understanding—that who we are is who we were. We desperately need your strength and wisdom to triumph over our fears, our prejudices, ourselves. Give us the courage to do what is right…’

‘…who we are is who we were.’ The statement blew my mind. Paraphrasing another character in the film—a pagan who shocked the Christian former president with a startling thought: that all our ancestors—even the Founding Fathers of the nation we inherited from them—that today, we are the whole reason they existed at all.

That ‘Continental Congress’ declared liberty—not for themselves but for us; they eventually wrote the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and more—not to benefit themselves, but us. WE the PEOPLE are the whole reason they established what they did. So, what are we doing with it? Fun, food and family is our delight, and if they could rise to see it, I think they would be blessed by all the celebrations.

But remember also to ask God for the courage to daily do what is right—the right that isn’t established by popular vote or the loudest voices, but by a manuscript from another world—the Bible, written and established by an all-powerful eternal Author, from which the Fathers endlessly cited as true. They understood this, and put it in writing, too. And because they did, to this day we have liberty—a liberty tha requires virtue—what is right in God’s eyes. And virtue requires faith and faith requires liberty. A golden triangle, as Os Guinness called it.

Unlike movie characters, perhaps today—Independence Day—we should pray something similar to Spielbergs’ character, to the God Who Is—that, ‘We, too, desperately need Your strength and wisdom to triumph over our fears, our prejudices, ourselves. Give us the courage to do what is right…’ Amen.

Happy 4th.

—j