American Idol

I will be the first to admit that this election season has absolutely worn me down. I've struggled greatly between my sense of patriotism and what I know to be true as a Christian. The more culture continues to evolve, the worse it gets. After all, I love my country and I'm grateful for the freedoms that I enjoy. More and more however, my Christian beliefs don't line up with the direction I'm seeing my country head.

It's not just a Republican vs Democrat vs Libertarian kind of mindset, it's the whole thing and I'm honestly struggling with how to wrap my head around it. One of the last things that I want to do is be seen as someone who's not patriotic. But that's when I got to thinking - what exactly does it mean to be patriotic?

Patriotism is defined as expressing vigorous support for one's country. When I consider patriotism, I immediately start to form images of our founding fathers, the way they formed our Constitution and started the American Revolution. Go to Russia or China or somewhere in the Middle East and those cultures have a deep sense of patriotism too - they’re also completely different from ours.

It's easy to think that American culture is the ideal for the world, but the reality is the rest of the world doesn't necessarily see things the way we do. This is a very basic idea, but it's one that we have a hard time grasping because we want to assume that we are right.

It's the assumption that we know what is right and what is wrong that gets us into trouble in the first place. For most of our country's history, we've lived with cultural ideals that more or less line up with Christianity. Those ideals have more than just come into question recently - they’ve come under outright attack. The left and the right no longer see eye-to-eye on very important topics and those claiming to be “progressive” have made it all but illegal to openly disagree with their agenda. The divide is so great that there's more than just a little bit of talk about a second American Revolution.

But what's crazy is there are gospel believing Christians who are going to vote Republican and there are those that are going to vote Democrat. So who's right?

The answer is neither one. In fact, we're not even asking the right question.

At what point did the United States of America become the new Israel or the country designated by for the Christian Church?

Our Constitution clearly delineates that there is a separation of church and state. It is something that our founding fathers felt important enough to build the foundation of our country on. So it's time to stop defining ourselves as Republicans, Democrats and Libertarians and start looking back to Scripture for real answers.

If you look carefully enough it scripture, you're going to find a scary truth - that American patriotism can easily turn into an idol. Take the Israelites for example. If their sense patriotism was so important to God, then surely they would have been able to celebrate it openly and immediately revolt against any country that would have wished to enslave or exile them.  

Yet that's clearly not the case. They spent more time as slaves and in exile than they did having their own country. As you read through Biblical history, you won't find one example where God told the Israelites to rise up against those in authority over them. They were expected to submit to the authority that was in place unless they were instructed to do something God forbade or to not do something that God commanded. The only Israelite rebellions we see in the Bible happen when they rebelled against God.

So where does that put us as Christians?

First, I think we need to recognize that our sense of patriotism is an idol to most of us (myself included). I love the idea of America and I love the ideals that our founding fathers put in place. However, the fact of the matter is most of those things are not guaranteed to us in the Bible -  what we call God-given rights aren’t necessarily so.

What we need to do is separate those American ideals from what we are taught in Scripture and make sure that we are following God's law to the best of our ability. The vast majority of what Jesus taught is relational to the people around us - not necessarily a global or national system.

Keep in mind that one of the major things that Jewish people got wrong when Jesus showed up was thinking that the Messiah was going to take over and put them back in power. Not once did Jesus ever tell his disciples to expect political power.  What he taught involved how much God loves us as individuals.  In fact, the entire Bible points to Jesus as the substitute that was required to redeem us from our sins, not to place Christians in position of political power.

So yes, I love America and I'm very sad to see the direction that our country seems to be heading. But if I stay stuck on this idea of what America was or what I think America was intended to be, I miss my identity all together.  I am a sinner saved by grace and redeemed by Jesus Christ. My loyalty is to him, he bought me with a price and I belong to him.

It's a very tough reality for me to think that patriotism and Christianity don't go hand-in-hand. But as our country continues to evolve, I can't blindly follow. It's up to us as Christians to dive into Scripture and see what's really there. You'll find that there's not a command to rebel, but rather to submit to authority.

Furthermore, in Galatians 5, Paul remind us about the fruits of the Spirit. “But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” The very things the Bible tells us are indicators of the Spirit living in us (that we’ve become truly converted Christians) also tell us there is no law against them.

I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with having a sense of patriotism whether that's a sense of where we're headed or a sense of where we've been. But I do think it's wrong to tie the love of America on either side as an indication of Christianity.

So I would encourage you to participate in our election process, to petition government officials, and peacefully protest the ideals that you believe in within the bounds of the law. After all, those are rights that we are given by our Constitution and it is a blessing from God that we live under it. However, I would also encourage you to remember that we are first and foremost Children of the one true God and secondarily Americans. Only by understanding where our identity truly lies will we be able to anchor our hope in our unchanging God rather than the shifting sands of social progression.