Song of Solomon 8:1 "O that you were like a brother to me, that nursed at my mother's breast! If I met you outside, I would kiss you, and none would despise me."

The Song of Solomon is a love poem, an exchange in which sometimes God is speaking to His beloved, and sometimes the beloved is speaking to Him, and both are deeply (actually erotically!) in love with each other. This line is the beloved wishing that God was like a brother to her, so she could show her love in overt ways without being shamed. She could kiss him in public and no one would raise an eyebrow.

If only we were all this in love with God! If only we all yearned to be able to show the world our all-consuming love for our Creator without being denigrated, or even punished, for it. Our founding fathers realized this desire in people and gave us great protections for religious liberty. I think Americans may have become too complacent in those protections, failing to take full advantage of them, letting our love for God be silenced by embarrassment or a desire to "fit in," so that our love for God has become lukewarm. As a consequence, our religious liberties are being slowly eroded and many do not seem to see it, or to be too concerned about it, because they no longer feel the intense love for God that inspires us to want to "kiss him in public."

But one aspect of human nature is that when something is being taken from us, we want it all the more. So maybe the erosion of our religious liberties will make people realize how valuable they are, and eventually begin fighting for them. The events taking place in the world right now seem tailor-made to call us all back to God. As we return, one by one, and fall back in love with Him, we will be filled with the desire of the beloved in Song of Solomon, and want to proclaim our love to the world. We may find the religious liberty landscape much changed when we get to that point, but we will just have to fight for it all over again.