Great post from John Pavlovitz! While we have certainly had Christian influence on our country and we have (and continue to remain) a plurality of our country professing to be Christian, we agree with Pastor John that God looks more at us as souls than he does us as a nation.
America wasn’t even a nation when the Bible was written. There is no clear evidence supported by institutions and their panel of experts that future prophecy conclusively points to America as having a “special blessing” from God either.
So, it is in the above sense that we can state that America is NOT a Christian nation. We can also state the fact that Christianity is NOT singled out in our Constitution nor our Declaration – the founding documents upon which our Republic is based. Furthermore, we look to the First Amendment and, while religious liberty for Christians is certainly protected, it is no more protected than any that of any other religion.
We have strong religious liberty in this country relative to many, many other countries. That liberty, like many others in our Bill of Rights, is bounded by not taking away someone else’s liberty. When there is a conflict between these competing rights, we have our courts who use rule of law and independent & impartial justices / judges to define the outcome as they best determine.
But, as a Christian, we should be proud of our country for providing that kind of protection for all and that kind of process for determining “truth” amidst conflict. Even so, I would still recommend some contemplation on the words from the Apostle Paul:
“Each of you should look not only to your own interests but to the interests of others.”
A great proverb I learned from my days at a Christian youth camp:
- God is first.
- The other person is second.
- I am third.
Let’s be sure we, as Christians, take the high ground to apply that when someone asks us about things that aren’t really threats to our life, liberty or property – like graciously:
- calling a person by the pronoun they would like to be called by,
- wearing a mask when a store owner / person in authority asks you to
- getting a vaccine / submitting to testing (assuming there’s no physical or religious limitation) if it’s required for travel, work or school
This doesn’t mean we roll over and die on the things that really matter (for the most part, the above situations really do NOT matter) but that we are, in good faith, doing our best to be “salt and light” in the eyes of most reasonable people!
No, this isn’t the kind of inflammatory, fear-fueled threat that lots of Evangelical pastors prefer to major in these days.
It’s not some doom and gloom, sky-is-falling, bullhorn warning that God is ticked-off at this country and is doing terrible things to us because of it.
This is not a dire, brimstone chastising about God abandoning us for our growing wickedness, removing the specific good fortune we once deserved and received.
It’s simply a reminder that God doesn’t bless America and has never blessed America, for the same reason that God doesn’t curse America—God doesn’t see America.
The heart of our Christian story is that God is not in a nation-maker or an empire-builder. God is a soul-lover.
The first few words of one of the most universally known passages of Scripture: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life, reveal something powerfully beautiful about the massive scope and yet the startling intimacy of the love of God.
It is universe-sized, and yet it is individually delivered.
It is bigger than continent or nation or government, of border or land or country. It is more than a place or a regime or a power.
It turns out that God has been creating, speaking to, and blessing people long before America was even a gleam in mother England’s eye.
The lazy phrase God Bless America has saturated our Christian culture and flooded our churches and pulpits; and yet beyond an easy high, beyond a feel-good phrase to fuel our nationalistic and religious fervor—it doesn’t really mean all that much.
God’s agenda is not America’s prosperity or dominance or success, and God’s reach is not confined within our borders either.
God isn’t interested with making it great, or great again.
To say that God blesses America, is to claim that we have the market cornered on reflecting the image of the Divine, and that all of our citizens would even care to make such a claim for themselves. It is to assume we all act as a monolith.
I understand patriotism. I get loving where you come from. I understand how proximity naturally breeds affinity. It’s when these ideas of nationalism and home and country begin to define our theology or create our religious worldview that we fashion ourselves into an idol. We begin to actually renovate God in our own opulent, aggressive, capitalistic image and ask that the world bow down to it.
When we imagine America as specifically blessed, we replace God’s will with our national desires. We make our country God’s agenda. We act as if Divinity is on our payroll. We can then easily justify seeing those beyond our borders as inferior or dangerous or even evil.
We begin to think we can legislate out the love and wrath of God.
The simplified story of the Christian faith is:
– God uses a people, the Israelites, to be a model for the world; a way to reveal to them God’s character.
– God makes a covenant with Abraham to be the “father of many nations”. In this first covenant, God is reached through following rules and laws.
– When the Israelites prove to be unable to represent God and to follow the rules to perfection, God sends Jesus and he makes a second covenant. This time, God is not reached through rules, but by faith. God creates a new people; one not marked by government or borders or geography, but by belief and because of their belovedness.
In other words, God is not about the franchising out of the American Dream and we should never operate under that assumption.
In a letter to a church in Colossae (Col. 3:11-12) a pastor named Paul is writing to an early Christian faith community, and he gives them these words: Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
Paul reminds his listener that all barriers and divisions, all designations, labels, borders and bloodlines are now inferior. They are man-made and they are all rendered meaningless. This is not just semantics; not merely a trivial word choice revision we need to make as we live in the world. This is a life-altering truth that can change how we see everything.
As a Christian, when I begin to live bigger than God Bless America:
God gets right-sized. Instead of being an employee of my country, God again becomes the eternal, perfect, unfathomable Creator of the world whose name or likeness or will aren’t up for sale.
Compassion widens. A child in the suburbs of Detroit or in the slums of Africa becomes just as important to me as one in my own playroom. I will advocate, grieve, work and sacrifice for all of them equally.
My purpose changes. My goal will no longer be to get everyone to live like America or to emulate America. I won’t look to franchise out my culture or my lifestyle. My individual calling as a believer, will be to tell every person I meet of God’s love for them.
Justice goes viral. I’ll no longer deem suffering outside my country as more tolerable as that which happens within it. I will become a citizen of the world and a lover of Humanity.
American Christian:
Love your country.
Treasure your home land.
Be proud of where you come from.
Celebrate this nation.
But never believe that God blesses America.
That is even greater news.
This content was originally published here.