Occasionally, two diametrically opposed realities spring to our attention, surprising us by means of their stark contrast and then summoning up unexpected revelations.

That happened recently as I was working on my laptop in my favorite coffee shop, Dynamic Life. Behind me 10 women, all of grandmotherly age with Bibles at hand, scooted a couple of tables together and were discussing some passage from Scripture. To my left, a 20-something woman in a baseball cap sat tapping away at her phone. Near her, two men had put aside their laptops for a conversation, while an older woman at the next table was staring into the screen of her smartphone, laptop open before her, headphones firmly in place.

This coffeeshop is associated with a local evangelical church. On one wall, a long sign in letters 18” high or more are the words, “Making Jesus Famous,” which always make me smile. Christians need to make Jesus better understood in their evangelization, but famous doesn’t quite fit the bill. On an adjacent wall hangs a big-screen TV, usually tuned to Fox News.

On this particular Thursday, browsing the online headlines and commentary while on a break, I came across an article entitled, “22 Really Bizarre Facts About the Most Orwellian Society on Earth.” Curious, I clicked on the link, and was treated to a brief tour of North Korean practices, laws, and eccentricities.

Scattered across the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, that communist state about the size of Mississippi, are some 40,000 statues of the first “Great Leader” Kim Il-sung. After his death in 1994, the cult which doubles as his political party placed his embalmed body on permanent display in Pyongyang, the nation’s capital. On July 8, the anniversary of when the Great Leader died, it is against the law for North Koreans to smile or laugh. The law also requires that every household display a picture of Kim Il-sung.

The article then informs us that the North Korean Constitution guarantees its citizens the same liberties as those in our own Bill of Rights: freedom of speech and the press, freedom of assembly and religion. These are but words on a paper, however, for the suppression of Christianity and the brutal persecution of its practitioners continue to this day.

This article led me to Aron Santarossa’s 2023 piece, “10 Completely Normal Things That Are Banned in North Korea.” There the law forbids the use of the global internet. Only state-controlled television is available to citizens. After high school, nearly all men are required to join the military for 10 years, the women until age 23. Afterwards, they are assigned the jobs they will do for the rest of their lives. Western staples like skinny jeans are forbidden, and men are forbidden to wear their hair longer than two inches.

If you value your life and your freedom, even if you are a foreigner, you never criticize the leadership or their policies. That’s a sure ticket to a prison cell. A reader subtly illustrates this certainty of punishment by posting this joke in in the comments section below Santarossa’s article, “I asked my North Korean friend how life is in North Korea. He said, ‘I can’t complain.’”

How does this relate to my beloved small-town coffee shop?

In that establishment, freedom of religion is everywhere in evidence, as are the freedoms of speech, assembly, and the press. The women gathering for a Bible discussion were nothing out of the ordinary; I’d seen them and others like them here on previous occasions. The young woman on her phone, the men talking together, the woman hooked up to three devices: all were practicing these freedoms without qualms of saying the wrong thing or being arrested.

These freedoms are so much a part of our daily lives, so taken for granted, that we rarely give them a second thought. Yet for whatever reason, on this particular day the violent contrast between what I’d read online about life in North Korea and the ordinary behavior of my fellow Americans in the coffee shop became real and glaring. Absorbing this spectrum of extremes brought thoughts of the blessings that come with being an American. To have lived my entire life in a time and a place where the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” however battered and abused, still apply, is incredible.

From those reflections there drifted one more word that summed up my state of mind. That word is gratitude.

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.