Freedom of speech is not a feeling. It is not a courtesy. It is not something a corporation grants you when your opinions are convenient and punishes you when they are not. Free speech is a main guarantor of the individual, and it is the oxygen of a free society. And right now, brothers and sisters, we are that frog being slow-boiled.
I want you to understand that I am not talking about abstract constitutional theory. I’m talking about what happens to a man when he opens his mouth and speaks the truth, and the world comes crashing down on him for it. I’m talking about what it costs to say an unpopular thing in a country that was founded on the right to say unpopular things.
I’m talking about what happened to Jaden Ivey.
You probably already saw the news. The first thing I saw was the Chicago Bulls’ post on X: “The Chicago Bulls announced today that the team has waived guard Jaden Ivey due to conduct detrimental to the team.”
Ivey’s crime? He posted a video saying that the NBA’s Pride Month celebrations are “unrighteousness.” On his Instagram post, you can hear the genuine bewilderment in his voice: “How is my conduct detrimental to the team? Because I believe in the truth? Because I know Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life? How?”
That question should stop every one of us cold.
What Ivey focused on was the NBA’s institutional promotion of Pride Month. He stated: “The world proclaims LGBTQ, right? They proclaim Pride Month, and the NBA does too. They show it to the world. They say, ‘Come join us for Pride Month,’ to celebrate unrighteousness. They proclaim it on the billboards. They proclaim it in the streets. Unrighteousness.”
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He did not say anything derogatory about gay people. There were no slurs, personal attacks or hate directed at anyone. The key word here is “unrighteousness,” and Ivey was criticizing the NBA, a basketball organization, for choosing to promote select values and morals that clashed with his own.
In his streams, Ivey talks about Jesus as “the way, the truth, and the life,” and he speaks of judgment day. In this light, “unrighteousness” is a scriptural term.
This is the bedrock Christian conviction that it is sin that separates people from God and that it is only Jesus who can offer forgiveness and transformation to anyone who repents. For the record, Ivey extended this standard not only to Pride Month but to other players’ behaviors and even to Catholicism as a “false religion.”
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In short, he wasn’t hurling insults. He was making a public, faith-based moral judgment that the celebration of Pride Month is itself “unrighteousness,” just as the NBA was making its own moral judgment.
The difference is that the NBA had the power. But just how clean is this power?
Ivey is a young man who can play basketball. He put the work in. He showed up. He conducted himself with goodness. His team did not cut him for missing shots or missing practice. They cut him for missing the script, for refusing to perform a belief he does not hold or celebrate something that his Bible calls unrighteous.
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Meanwhile, we have watched players survive far worse: domestic violence against women, weapons charges, drug use and more. Somehow, they keep their jerseys. Somehow, they’re allowed redemption. But speak a biblical conviction out loud?
This censorship has been slow-boiling America for too long. It does not come with a government seal. It does not announce itself. It comes dressed in the language of inclusion and belonging, and it quietly tells you: You are welcome here, as long as you think like us. The moment you do not, you are not just wrong. You are dangerous. You are detrimental. You are gone. The slow-boil got Ivey good.
I know this road personally.
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I remember being a young pastor when you had to watch every word that came out of your mouth, especially being Black in a Chicago that was run by Rev. Jesse Jackson. Step outside the approved script on race, on culture or on faith, and you risked everything: your platform, your reputation, your safety.
Then one day I found the courage to say what I actually believed, and the death threats rolled in. I had to ask myself the same question Jaden Ivey is asking today: Why does one side get to speak freely while the other gets punished simply for having a conscience?
I want to be clear about something. I am not asking for the pendulum to swing back the other way and crush a different set of voices. I have been on the receiving end of that, and I would not wish it on anyone.
What I am asking for is something simpler and far more radical in today’s climate: the same standard for everyone. Free speech for all, or free speech for none. There is no third option that preserves liberty.
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That is exactly why I am out here walking across America, to finish building a community center on the South Side of Chicago. Not a place that tells young people what to think. A place that teaches them how to think. A place that produces free men and free women who know the difference between pressure and truth, who fear God more than they fear the mob, and who understand that the greatest power a human being possesses is the courage to speak what they believe regardless of the cost.
Jaden Ivey did not lose his job because he played poorly. He lost it because he played by the wrong rules — the rules of a kingdom that is not of this world. And to him I say: Brother, keep walking in that truth. The God who gave you the courage to speak will open a door that no front office can close. Proverbs 19:21 says, “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” No waiver wire reaches that high.
And to the rest of us, let this be our Rooftop Revelation:
Free speech is not just a constitutional right. It is a spiritual necessity. Without it, we cannot preach the Gospel. Without it, we cannot challenge a culture that is drifting from its moorings. Without it, we cannot raise up the generation this country desperately needs, young men and women who speak truth not because it is popular, but because it is true.
