Freedom That Lasts Student Manual

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My brothers and sisters, saints and sinners, bond and free children of the Most High God, all of you that love the Lord, and to all of you in your respectable places. We do greet you in the name of the unparalleled, incomparable, and matchless name of Jesus, and do share with you his word of inspiration, wisdom, and hope. For his word is rich and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that we might be equipped for every good work.

Hanna: Amen. I’m going to borrow a previous question: if there’s somebody in our audience tonight, and God is touching their heart and saying, ‘ why don’t you consider being a mentor?’ They may be thinking, ‘ not me.’ What would you say to them?Citizens in countries categorized as Free are five times as rich in terms of income per capita as citizens in countries that are only Mostly Free and six times as rich as those in Mostly Unfree countries. One year ago, the Atlantic Council created the Freedom and Prosperity Center with the mission to increase the well-being of people everywhere—and especially of the poor and marginalized in developing countries—through unbiased, data-based research on the relationship between freedom and prosperity. To help in this task, the Freedom and Prosperity Center last year introduced a pilot version of the Freedom and Prosperity Indexes, a quantification effort using 2021 data to assess the performance in terms of freedom and prosperity for virtually all countries of the world. With this report, we present the updated and improved 2023 Freedom and Prosperity Indexes, using annual data from 1995 to 2022. We start with a descriptive portrayal of freedom and prosperity in the world. But we then go one step further, providing a preliminary empirical analysis of the nature of the relationship between the two variables, and concluding that freedom tends to lead to prosperity. Countries with the largest positive changes in freedom between 1995 and 2022, such as Sierra Leone, Peru, or Georgia, have also experienced large increases in prosperity. Conversely, cataclysms in terms of freedom in, for example, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Belarus, Turkey, Russia, or Yemen have been followed by severe drops in prosperity.

A distinctive aspect of the Freedom and Prosperity Indexes is their root in and reflection of an expansive understanding of what constitutes a free and prosperous society. The Freedom Index includes measures of economic, political, and legal freedom. This broader definition of freedom differentiates the index from other measures focused on specific institutional aspects (electoral, corruption, economic openness, and so on). Likewise, the Prosperity Index is more exhaustive than previous measurement projects such as the United Nations Human Development Index or various poverty indexes. The rationale for our approach is based on the premise that we can gain new insights and better understand the mechanisms that lead to overall prosperity by analyzing the relationships and interconnections between different dimensions of freedom.

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The legal freedom subindex measures the degree to which a country abides by the rule of law. To be sure, there is no uncontested definition of the rule of law, and legal theorists and scholars disagree on the necessary attributes of the concept 2 For discussions on the different conceptualizations of the rule of law, see J. Waldron, “Is the Rule of Law an Essentially Contested Concept (in Florida)?,” Law and Philosophy21, no. 2 (2002), 137–164; B. Z. Tamanaha, On the Rule of Law: History, Politics, Theory(Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2004); or T. Bingham, The Rule of Law(London: Allen Lane, 2010).. Given our separate measurement of economic and political freedom, we followed the formal conceptualizations of the rule of law given by jurists such as Lon Fuller, Joseph Raz, or John Finnis 3 L. L. Fuller, The Morality of Law: Revised Edition (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1969); J. Raz, The Authority of Law: Essays on Law and Morality (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1979); and J. Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).. A simple definition that summarizes this notion is given by Brian Tamanaha: “The rule of law means that citizens and government officials are bound by and abide by the law.” 4 B. Z. Tamanaha, “The History and Elements of the Rule of Law,” Singapore Journal of Legal Studies(2012): 232–247. Therefore, our measure of legal freedom is stripped of any substantive content, in particular the protection of any individual rights that are included in the political and economic freedom subindexes. The Legal Freedom Index measures the degree to which a country’s citizens and government officials comply with and fairly apply the established laws and regulations, and is thus linked to the ideas of certainty, stability, and predictability. When a country, especially its government, generally abides by the rule of law, individuals can form rational and accurate expectations about the future and consequently make better informed decisions regarding economic, family, or political issues. This book is dedicated to the families and friends who lost loved ones on that horrible day. May they find in these brief chapters the hope they need in these troubled times.”

Dr. Jim Berg: Anthony started coming to our church, and that’s where I met him. He started coming to our Friday night addiction recovery program, and we got to be really good friends. We just hit it right off immediately. And I remember early, early on, he came up to me and said: ‘ God laid on my heart to sing for you tonight.’ And so, I said, ‘ Come on up and sing!’ He sang a song about God, and how Jesus is the most wonderful thing that ever happened to him. There was so much heart in it, and it was obvious that God was working deeply in him. The Freedom Index includes measures of legal, economic, and political freedom. Legal freedom measures the degree to which a country abides by the rule of law. Political freedom reflects a country’s institutional framework for the selection of those holding executive political power and the limits and controls imposed on its exercise. Economic freedom measures whether the bulk of economic activity in a country is guided by the principles of free and competitive markets. We believe that all three are necessary for a society to be fully free. Need freedom from addiction? Want to be Biblically mentored through life’s issues? Independent Baptist Church offers Freedom That Lasts, a Christ-centered, Bible-based discipleship ministry. Come learn how you can win life’s battles through Jesus Christ. Please reach out to the church office at 630-759-1900 for more information.Dale Johnson: Great. This has been great. Ben, thank you so much. And for so many people who may have never heard of Freedom that Lasts. There are ministries out there that are biblically faithful and trying to help churches to minister in these particular areas. So, thank you, brother. Appreciate your time. Hanna: Fantastic. I should point out that Dr. Berg is the author and director of the Freedom That Lasts program that the men and women in our programs love to go to because it really helps them with their addiction dependence. Jim, I’m so grateful for all you do for us and our guests. Thank you for your faithful service. Dale Johnson:So let’s start there, what is “Freedom that Lasts”? I mean, I think for many people, they may not know about this ministry. And so, I want to give you an opportunity to introduce lots of people to Freedom that Lasts.