“Long, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn’d from joys and prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,
For who except myself has yet conceiv’d what your children en-masse really are?”
-Walt Whitman
I hope no one finds my selection of this particular poem offensive, either because it is from Whitman or because it speaks boldly and brashly to Americans en-masse of what we have become.
I hope anyone I may have offended will find comfort in the knowledge that I think Whitman was wrong in believing Americans have become anything inherently bad. In order to become inherently bad, we would have had to begin as something other than that--but we didn’t. I chose to share Whitman’s poem here because it reflects a popular opinion in and of Americans, which is that we started out as a joyous, prosperous, glorious nation, and that we have now fallen from the glorious state of our past into a state of utter depravity.
People of all values and backgrounds have images of how we can improve the country we live in and somehow restore it to its former self, but we choose to ignore the fact that the former self we see America as having been is an idealized version, which never truly existed in the perfection we perceive. Either because a perfect America is not attainable or because we have not even approached something close, people respond to our present shortcomings across a spectrum with two dangerous ends: idolatry and undermining.
To one end, many people place an idealized image of America on a pedestal and practically worship it. This is common in culturally Christian places, which makes it even more detrimental. In all our “God bless America”s and “in God we trust”s, we confound religion and nationalism. To people on this end of the spectrum, I want to offer both encouragement and admonishment. In all circumstances, the best thing we can do for our country is pray for it, in times of both trouble and prosperity. Furthermore, we should be thankful to God for placing us in a country with so much liberty and opportunity, because it gives us freedom to worship him and seek to glorify him in all we do, with no fear of interference from the place we call home. This truly is a blessing and truly can only be attributed to the provision and blessings of our Father. To that end, we should also acknowledge how countless those blessings are. For instance, we should always be thankful to the men and women who make sacrifices to protect our home, both inside and outside its borders. It is in no way wrong to celebrate our armed forces and public servants, and to acknowledge that the place they protect is worth protecting. However, it is also important to understand that in the Bible when God speaks to and of his “people,” he is not speaking to or of Americans; the United States were not operating when Adam first walked the earth, when Jesus died on the cross, or even in the years following when Paul traveled the known world on mission for Christ. God’s people are simply that: God’s people. The church. The people he called to himself, the people he prepared a place for, the people who will spend eternity with him in heaven are not exclusively American, they are exclusively Christian. There is certainly a difference between the two, contrary to some of our song lyrics and currency.
On the other end of the spectrum, where I have probably chased some of you with the previous paragraph, we have apathy toward our home: God did not mention America in his word, and Americans are not God’s chosen people; therefore, God does not care about America, and neither should we. To people on this end of the spectrum, I again have both encouragement and admonishment. It is certainly true that America is not God’s kingdom, and we know from the Bible that God’s kingdom is the only thing that is truly forever. Everything else is temporary, so we should not put our hope in it or give it any value beyond what it is ultimately worth. Empires rise and fall; America is not immune to the ceaseless cycle of human history. It had its rise, and it will have its fall. However, with the mentality that everything temporary should have no value to us, we will value nothing in this world. We should not look to things of this world for satisfaction or hope, but that does not mean there is nothing beautiful or important in this world. God created it and saw it was good, and filled it with beauty out of excess of himself. He did not do this by accident, and as the part of his creation made in his image, we were designed to see this beauty, understand from whence it came, and give glory back to the creator of it. This applies to the physical creation we see around us, and also to the creation of circumstances. If we believe our God is omnipotent and omnipresent, we believe he puts us in specific times and places for specific purposes, and in the same sense that we should be thankful to him for the physical beauty around us, we should be thankful to him for his provision and sovereignty in our lives, including (but not limited to) his placement of us in America. He gave us a home where we would not have to worry about protecting our liberty to live the lives he called us to, and this deserves, at the very least, our thanks. Furthermore, it deserves our honor and good use of the gift. Therefore, we should not be apathetic toward America; instead, we should constantly remember we are blessed to live here, and we should constantly be reminded to thank God for that opportunity.
There are many other positions on the spectrum, and I did not write this post in order to suggest where on the spectrum I think anyone should be. I only hope this post will allow you, fellow Americans, to consider where you find yourself on the spectrum, and consider if it is the right place for you to be. Ultimately, how you view your home country does not matter. Your view of God, however, does. In all you do and think, consider first what you know to be true of God, and secondly how it does and should affect your actions and perception of everything else. Having these thoughts first in priority will rightly shape everything else you see, think, say, and do: everything depends on it, even on Independence Day.
"Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire." -Hebrews 12:28-29
