IN 2004, I GRADUATED FROM Park View High School and headed to Columbia University in New York City. I applied to the University of Virginia, Columbia, and New York University without significant guidance or preparation. I wish that I could say from a young age I wanted to attend an elite university, but that’s not true. I only knew about UVA because of a summer camp I was privileged to attend via the prompting of my seventh grade science teacher, Mrs. Palmer. And NYU was my safety school because I heard I should have one. I did not know UVA was the number one public university in the United States at the time when I visited there during middle school. And to be honest, I didn’t even know what the Ivy League was until twelfth grade. The reason that I applied to Columbia had more to do with my pride than potential.
Early in my senior year, someone said in passing, “I bet you couldn’t get into an Ivy League school.” I said, “Yes, I can!” totally ignorant of what they were talking about. I resolved to do research when I got home to figure out what the Ivy League was. Thankfully, we had internet access at home, and I typed “Ivy League” and “poetry” into the search bar. Columbia got the first hit. After publishing my first book in 2003, I knew that I wanted to write but had no idea what that looked like professionally. I watched “Def Poetry Jam” on TV, and a lot of those poets were based in New York, so my logic pointed me there. Hence, my super-specific pre-Google search began and ended quickly. I filled out the essays and applications over a few nights and started on the other requirements.
There were no SAT prep classes, private tutors, or private middle schools or high schools for me. I took the SATs once, and I didn’t know anyone else in my high school taking the SAT IIs. I scored 1160 on a 1600 scale, which was well below average compared to my would-be classmates. The average UVA and Columbia scores at the time were 1570. The average for my county, though, was 800. So I guess I was above average for the Southside District. And therein laid my faulty grasp of the world around me.
I was a published author and a varsity high school athlete in three sports. I was holding down one to three jobs to support my family, had a beautiful girlfriend; I didn’t have a “baby momma” or criminal record. I thought my life was great, and for an American black male from a broken home, this was a stellar start. Most people around me said as much. My ego was stroked by crowds, and I surrounded myself with people who ensured I felt good about myself. All of this came to a screeching halt at the end of my freshman year at Columbia.
It wasn’t a mystery to my professors that I was struggling in my classes. This was especially clear in the core curriculum and particularly literature and humanities. “Lit Hum,” as it’s known on campus, was the first of two huge courses on majority Western literature. I didn’t know how to read five hundred pages a week, write multiple essays at once, or do life far away from anything comfortable and familiar. I was not “special” in this environment, and I stood out for all the wrong reasons.
Before handing in my final paper of freshman year, I distinctly remember changing the font type and size and adjusting the margins of the document to get to the required page count. On top of that, the core argument of my mock debate between Aristotle and Plato was terrible. Matthew Seidel, my professor and the chair of the department at the time, reviewed this sad attempt before I handed in the in-class portion of our exam. When I walked up to his desk, he looked me in the eyes and said, “You’re tired. This summer you need to go back to Brodnax and do whatever you need to do to come back here.” Standing there in a cutoff T-shirt from my high school soccer team, gray sweatpants, and sneakers far past their prime, I felt exposed.
This was not Brodnax, Virginia. This was not Park View High School. This was Columbia University in the City of New York. The only thing true about my being the best was that I believed I was. If I was willing to acknowledge the shortcomings of my education, my need for mentorship and development, my lack of critical thinking skills, and the genuine culture shock that exacerbated all of these issues—only then I could truly grow and change. And I don’t mean grow and change into someone who was the best or better when compared to others. I mean I needed to develop into someone who was reflective, honest, humble, and willing to learn and serve others even with my limits and needs in full view. This entire predicament through the lens of white American folk religion makes sense. My own sense of validation and value came through work, and that also affected how I valued and prioritized others. I reflected minimally and only slowed down to learn how to work harder and excel in order to reduce my own suffering and discomfort. I rarely admitted or addressed my limitations, opting instead to pretend to be perfect and do whatever it took to protect the false self I projected to the world around me.
MISGUIDED EXCEPTIONALISM
The idea that I am exceptional is not accidental or random, but American to its core. I believed that I had a special purpose that didn’t need refinement, only a platform to exert my will. And American exceptionalism claims the same about the United States. America must be the greatest nation on earth and hold a coveted place in God’s plan for the universe. This theology is unbiblical and destructive, and the social implications of these beliefs are highly problematic. Conservative author Dinesh D’Souza articulates this stream of thought. John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” claim reasserts itself for the present day in the following excerpts from D’Souza’s “10 Great Things” in the National Review:
In most countries in the world, your fate and your identity are handed to you; in America, you determine them for yourself. America is a country where you get to write the script of your own life. Your life is like a blank sheet of paper, and you are the artist. This notion of being the architect of your own destiny is the incredibly powerful idea that is behind the worldwide appeal of America. Young people especially find irresistible the prospect of authoring the narrative of their own lives. . . .
And surely African Americans like Jesse Jackson are vastly better off living in America than they would be if they were to live in, say, Ethiopia or Somalia. America has found a solution to the problem of religious and ethnic conflict that continues to divide and terrorize much of the world. . . .
America, the freest nation on earth, is also the most virtuous nation on earth. . . .
We should love our country not just because it is ours, but also because it is good. America is far from perfect, and there is lots of room for improvement. In spite of its flaws, however, American life as it is lived today is the best life that our world has to offer. Ultimately America is worthy of our love and sacrifice because, more than any other society, it makes possible the good life, and the life that is good.1
D’Souza, an Indian immigrant who writes passionately about following Jesus, married his faith to Western ideals, the US Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and American capitalism. Justice does not roll down in this narrative, but the idea that there is no other place on the planet like the United States trickles down even to its most destitute residents. From D’Souza’s perspective, the United States has flaws, but Americans need only be grateful and keep pressing forward because nowhere is better than the Red, White, and Blue. In this narrative, WAFR sets up the United States as the ideal, so the kingdom of God is not. And America’s pace of work, lack of reflection, and false grip on reality keep followers moving, with the reminder from evangelists like D’Souza that we are all doing just fine.
We see this assertion especially after police violence or injustice gains significant attention. If there are flaws, the system isn’t broken; it was just an isolated incident. Inhabitants of America are still much better off than they would be somewhere else. At its extreme, these ideas are articulated more radically. For example, when referring to slaves in America, D’Souza says in The End of Racism that “the American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well.”2 The lie that America is the greatest nation in the world builds on the aforementioned myths and puts itself in opposition to the Jesus of Scripture, his gospel, and the kingdom of God.
The lie that our individual and collective realities are different is exposed in a brief analysis of education in America. In the educational documentary Waiting for Superman, the following data was presented:
Since the 1970s US schools have failed to keep pace with the rest of the world. Among thirty developed countries we rank twenty-fifth in math and twenty-first in science. The top 5 percent of [US] students rank twenty-third out of twenty-nine developed countries. In almost every category we have fallen behind except one. The same study looked at math skills that in these eight countries [Korea, Japan, Spain, Germany, France, Australia, Canada] the US ranked last. But when the researchers asked the students how they felt they had done, “Did I get good grades in mathematics?” kids from the USA ranked number one in confidence.3
Like my first day sitting in class at Columbia University, I felt ready to contribute and prepared to stand out, but by the end of the year, I accepted that I was not. My graduating class from Park View High School was the first to have the Standards of Learning implemented. This standardized testing put us on par in the state with much more affluent areas closer to Washington, DC. Many of my classmates, unaware of what this change would mean, reached graduation day and did not receive a diploma but instead a certificate. Many teachers, including my mom, were no longer qualified to do their jobs and struggled to gain newly required certifications. Because salaries for teachers were low, colleges were two to three hours away, and many of the teachers were products of the previously segregated and still underresourced schools they now taught in, these new certifications were simply out of reach.
Ultimately, my mom lost her job and had to find another teaching position in North Carolina. Mecklenburg County still struggles to adequately prepare its students and teachers for academic excellence, yet the perception of their preparedness is still far from the reality they exist in. My county is not an exception but the rule in America, and the dominant narrative that “we are the best,” is challenged by citizens for whom things are not turning out as they hoped.
A HIGHER IDEAL
Without acknowledgment, there can be no confession. And without confession, there can be no repentance. Without repentance, there is no change of direction. And so, without this reorientation, justice isn’t possible. Thus the personal, relational, and systemic reconciliation and renewal that all of creation longs for is perpetually out of reach. In contrast, acknowledgment of our limits, confession of our brokenness, and turning toward redemption through an encounter with Jesus to pursue righteousness and justice is central to Christianity. The result of this personal and corporate confession is the present and eternal wholeness and shalom that God originally intended.
Therefore, it is not just that America believes it is exceptional that is problematic, but the idea coupled with the strident resistance to reflection, repentance, and submission to God makes it sinful.
Either Jesus reigns or we do. WAFR and the presence of God are not just two different theories but completely different kingdoms to be realized. Every person that has ever lived will have the opportunity to choose life with an idol or life with God.
WAFR’s idol is America, and it declares to all that the United States is the “greatest country on the planet” and all humanity’s ultimate dwelling place. Jesus declares that life with him and the people of God in the beautiful city of God is what we were ultimately made for.
We see this clearly when putting George Washington’s first inaugural address next to Jesus’ first sermon in John 4. In 1789, Washington stood before the Senate and House of Representatives and delivered a speech laying out his vision for both the presidency and the nation. After brief opening remarks, Washington offered praise and appreciation to God and claimed divine connections between the destiny of the United States, the world, and his historical moment:
In obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present station, it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge.4
It is apparent that Washington firmly believed that God’s providential hands were on the men in the room. And he claimed that he can hardly contain his thankfulness to God, saying these reflections were too “strongly on my mind to be suppressed.” Therefore, the racial, gender, and class-based hierarchy, along with land theft and genocide of Native Americans and enslavement of Africans that made this momentous occasion possible were no doubt God’s “providential agency” guided by his “invisible hand.” Additionally, there is no doubt that Washington’s personal experience was the opposite of the “tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities” he claims to be responsible for the formation of this new nation. His two to three hundred slaves, the Iroquois that were skinned from the hips down after defeat under his watch, and the seventy-five thousand men wounded and maimed in the Revolutionary War would likely disagree with his assessment.5 Still, though, he claimed there is no better circumstance for a nation of such promise and blessing to begin. Washington continued to assert the supposed divine nature of the United States’ past, present, and future:
The propitious smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained; and since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.
Consistent with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, Washington endorses the republic, the role of the US government, and strident patriotism. But he goes a step further and calls it ordained by heaven. Since Washington and his white, wealthy, male comrades were able to have the things they worked so hard for, there is no doubt that God ordained it to be this way. Thus, “preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model” as entrusted to them (white, male, wealthy) is the highest calling and must never be abandoned. This marriage of power and favor on the precondition of sexuality, gender, race, wealth, and effort, along with nationalism, is the foundation and core of WAFR and is embodied in the first president of the United States. Per Washington and those who adopt this unbiblical belief and perspective, this is what makes the United States the greatest nation on earth.
The kingdom of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ is altogether different.
THE LORD’S FAVOR
In Luke 4:14-20, Jesus gives an account of who he is, what he’s come to do, and who sent him. After Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and tempted by Satan, he returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit. He taught in the temple, and word got out that something unique was happening—someone special was there. He entered the temple in his hometown, and while everyone was looking at him, he said:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.
He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set free those who are oppressed,
To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. (Luke 4:18-19)
This is similar to George Washington’s address in some key ways.
Like Washington, Jesus connected himself and his actions to the divine plan of God. Jesus also hearkened back to the prophet Isaiah, using a passage that those gathered in the temple would have known, just like when Washington paraphrased some of the Declaration of Independence and culturally well-known religious phrases. Both of them declared what they were aiming to do and what it would accomplish. It’s likely that even their audiences were a bit similar. Likely surrounding Jesus were men of power, wealth, and those who benefited from the structures of society, just like Washington was surrounded by wealthy, well-connected, white men. This is where the similarities end.
Jesus did not pander to or prioritize the people in his midst as Washington did. Jesus did not affirm the way things were occurring among the Jewish people at the time or rebuke the Roman occupation. He did not double down on his commitment to the status quo; nor did he proclaim that the men gathered there were favored by God and thus would continue the lifestyle they enjoyed. His address prioritized certain people—the poor, the oppressed, prisoners, and the disabled. Some of these people were not even allowed into the temple! Jesus also proclaimed the year of the Lord’s favor, which is a reference back to Leviticus 25, where God proclaims four key realities:
freedom for all who were held captive as slaves or prisoners
restoration of all that had been lost, stolen, or forfeited
favor—receiving the provision and protection of the Lord
rest—both naturally (e.g., fields, animals) and spiritually6
Under the rule and reign of Christ, slaves and prisoners will be set free, and whatever was obtained unjustly is to be restored. People will be healed from disease and receive blessings of provision and protection. And for all, including the land and animals, there will be rest from all work and labor. Later in Luke 4, Jesus began to do what he said he would do by casting out demons, healing the sick, and preaching the kingdom of God.
Contrary to Jesus, Washington promoted and perpetuated slavery and systems of oppression that grew, changed, and persist to this day. The economic system he championed has only expanded its exploitation of the planet’s people and resources. He told his comrades that the path they were on was righteous, just, and good, while he twisted Scripture to prove these points. The implications of Washington’s speech and actions are entirely antithetical to the message of Christ. American exceptionalism is a tempting but unsatisfying idea.
All of us have to choose who we will serve. We can worship at the altar of work and performance for a reward. Or we can rest in Christ and work in response to the reception of our reward in full as we are adopted into the family of God and filled with the Holy Spirit by his glorious grace. The myth of American exceptionalism and the lie that America is the greatest country in the world is the extension of the individual belief that I am the best. And no person can bear this burden of superiority and supremacy, except for Christ.
Humility, not pride, marks faithful followers of Jesus, and choosing humility leads to life’s most beautiful and transformative moments. This occurs every time men confess ignorance and complicity in society’s war against women. Or when US citizens move from condemnation to advocacy for undocumented people. Or, in the ultimate rebuke of idolatry, when someone confesses their sin and asks Jesus to be the savior they cannot be for themselves.
FROM EXCEPTIONALISM TO CONFESSION
While reading Salma Hayek’s “Harvey Is My Monster Too” in the New York Times, I found myself forced to choose between the pridefulness of WAFR—which tempts me to think, I am so much better than those men over there—or humility and repentance, confessing my complicity in her exploitation.7 Reading her tragic account, I could only think of my contribution to her abuse. I could not muster anger at Harvey Weinstein, only disappointment in myself that my young eyes too had made her less than human.
After Mrs. Hayek recounted Weinstein’s retaliation because of her rejection of his sexual advances, she said this of her abuser: “In his eyes, I was not an artist. I wasn’t even a person. I was a thing: not a nobody, but a body.” This is true of Weinstein, but it was also true of me.
Frida was a stunningly beautiful film starring Hayek, and I watched it when it premiered in 2002. But I didn’t watch it because I wanted to learn more about Frida Kahlo. I watched it because it was rated R for sexuality and nudity. I could not tell you what Desperado (1995) was about, but I could tell you that Hayek was in it. And intellectually I could make a case for why a guy like me would be interested in both of those films but if I am honest, the plot was irrelevant. I am guilty of reducing Hayek to a body, and I confess and repent. Because to do that to a woman made in the image of God is a violation of her humanity and God’s grand purposes for both of us.
There is a vast, silent group of men and women who financially sustained what Weinstein did for decades. And a large and growing number of men and women are willing to pay for more as the use of pornography continues to grow, while music videos and other media follow the same dollars. Further eroticization continues as the entertainment industry makes billions of dollars by reducing human beings to bodies that men and women like me consume. Flesh is auctioned and sold as art and entertainment, and many are willing to pay, as I did. I clicked on ads that made money for a company that made sure more cleavage was seen in the sidebar of my screen. Totally unnecessary scenes in movie trailers geared toward men like me get us to buy tickets to the theater, hit play on the internet videos, or stay up late watching Cinemax.
I am not exceptional. There are too many holes in my case for greatness. And neither can America claim to be the greatest country, because only God and his purposes are great. Sexual exploitation is essential to this nation, but it is not part of his kingdom. There are two options: confess and repent, or justify ourselves and mount a defense of our own righteousness. Paul chose to confess and repent, allowing Christ to be his righteousness (Philippians 3:3-14). The key word for me throughout Philippians 3 is the word flesh.
Flesh is not referring to Paul’s physical body per se but indicates an internal disposition linked to where Paul put his trust. He resisted the urge to stand on his ethnic heritage, cultural identity, citizenship, education, class, or accomplishments for justification. Paul knew that these things could not bear the weight of his identity. Instead he chose full reliance on Christ. He chose not to walk in the false self but in the fullness of the Spirit. Paul’s greatness is bound up in the greatness of Christ. Thus he can embrace the faults he has because his status doesn’t change, and followers of Jesus can do the same thing. Even more, we can point out the faults around us without judgment or condemnation but with compassion and justice by acknowledging our individual and collective weakness and calling all to true strength in Christ.
In WAFR, it is not possible to acknowledge weakness, practice confession, and repent to receive the forgiveness, acceptance, and mercy from God. In WAFR, a person must work for it. But in the kingdom of God individual and corporate confession and repentance are essential disciplines and mark the lives of true children of God.
QUESTIONS FOR INDIVIDUAL REFLECTION AND SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION
What were your dominant feelings as you read this chapter: curiosity, hope, surprise, confusion, numbness, familiarity, distance, or something else?
When were those feelings the most present?
What phrases, stories, or historical events resonated with you?
What events or narratives were you unaware of? What did you learn?
Where do you disagree or have concerns?
What questions are you carrying?
WE MUST BE CLEANSED BY GOD TO BE SENT BY GOD
There is nothing we can do for God to love us any more or any less. Read Isaiah 6:1-8. If you were to have an encounter with Jesus, knowing that he knows everything about you already and loves you anyway, what would you bring to him that you might be clean? Write it down as if you were writing a letter to God.
Then, turn to Psalm 103 and reflect on the forgiveness of God and his mercy toward us. What verses stand out to you and why?
Go back to Isaiah 6 and read the whole chapter.
After Isaiah confessed, he was blessed and sent. Isaiah confessed that he was a man of unclean lips, and as the prophet to the people, this is the core of his daily life. Yet God doesn’t take his position away but instead sends him back to speak. Go back and read what you confessed.
How might God want to use your cleansing to proclaim the greatness of his name?
Who might God be sending you to?
What would be your message to them?