It’s Thursday, kids, and I find myself vacillating between anger and sadness, determination and desperation, boldness and pessimism. I’m happy to say that for the most part, I stay above the fray emotionally, but I’m finding that I can’t watch what’s happening to this country as though I’m detached from it.
It would be easy to turn off the news, dump social media and retreat into my library. I’ve got ideas for books that need to be written and I’ve got shelves of books that need to be read (either for the first time or read again). But I don’t do that because I love my country and I want to stay engaged.
I can remember when I read The Adventures of George Washington as a kid and I was so full of admiration for him, and proud that he was the Founder of my country! He was brave and wise and humble. I wanted to be brave and wise and humble!
When we celebrated the bi-centennial of America’s birth in 1976, I decorated my banana seat bicycle with a drawing of Uncle Sam and a flag and maybe some red, white and blue streamers. I rode up and down the street in front of my house cheering our 200th birthday.
Whenever I’ve been able to, I put up the American flag for July 4 or Memorial Day. In the aftermath of 9/11, I went through two small cloth flags attached to my car’s antenna. I have almost always had an American flag on my desk.
In short, I’m a patriot and I love this country.
But I’m also a Christian and I love God. That necessarily creates a hierarchy in my loyalties. I am first a follower of Jesus Christ, meaning obedience to his leading and to the scriptures. Only when that is straight am I then a patriot. The tension I experience then is between my devotion to Jesus Christ and my affection for my country.
And this is where I turn to the scriptures for help in ordering my loyalties. As entities, nations are subject to the sovereignty of God—even the United States of America.
He makes nations great, and he destroys them; he enlarges nations, and leads them away. (Job 12:23)
A significant part of our Founding story is that the United States was established by God as a beacon of hope in a lost world, leading to American exceptionalism. Going back to the earliest days when the first immigrants came to the New World, Puritan minister John Winthrop delivered his sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity” in 1630 while still on a boat sailing toward Massachusetts Bay.
As he concluded, he spoke of “a special commission” God had given those on board. Because it was a covenant between them and Him, God would “expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it” in order not to fail. He went on, referring obliquely to Matthew 5:14-16:
“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”
By God’s grace they succeeded, of course, and the United States of America has become the greatest nation in the history of the world. But 400 years later, the humility shown by John Winthrop before God is nowhere to be found on the national level.
The United States is in decline and no one knows whether it will crash and burn or recover. I believe our national abandonment of God has played no small part in our descent.
Nations are transient, passing into and out of existence as God determines. That’s why my first loyalty is to Christ, “for kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations” (Psalm 22:8). But as I watch the chaos in our country, I wonder: “Is there a place for patriotism?” I believe there is, and it comes with biblical support. That’s for tomorrow’s Broadside.