Why the Battle Might Get Worse, but Our Political Hopes Can Remain Unchanged, Untroubled, Untouched
I went to a Washington Nationals baseball game yesterday with my wife and kids. We had a great time: pretzels, cheese fries, cotton candy, lemonade. No one got a hot dog though.
During the seventh-inning stretch a woman sang “God Bless America.” People stood. Some removed their hats.
I have to admit, that song feels a little strange to me. Which God? What kind of blessing? It’s sort of like the words “In God we trust” on our dollar bills. Are we talking about the same God? And trust how?
I see advantages and disadvantages to those kinds of civic expressions of belief and trust in God. On the one hand, it’s the church’s job to pronounce the name of the Almighty. Also, such civic expressions can feel like hypocrisy.
On the other hand, a nation and its rulers should remind themselves often that they will appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive what is due for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil (2 Cor. 5:10). The psalmist warned:
Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.
Serve the LORD with fear,
and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him. (Ps. 2:10–12)
Notice to whom these lines are addressed: the kings and rulers of all nations, including ours. And as voters, aren’t we those rulers? Perhaps it’s good that the faintest glimmers of this warning show up every time someone looks at a dollar bill or hears that song.
LOVE OF NATION
I do want God to bless America, land that I love. I want him to bless it with peace and justice. I want the nation to know the blessing that comes to citizens and leaders who take refuge in him, as the final line of the psalm says.
Some of my more globally minded friends wonder if it’s okay to love your country. As with many forms of love, there’s healthy and unhealthy versions of love for country.
I love America analogously to how I love my own church. I don’t love my church to the exclusion of other churches. All our churches share one gospel and one God. We belong to one family. We’re on the same team. Nonetheless, it’s the members of my own church whose names I know, whose children I watch in the nursery, whose classes I teach, whose lives I’m a part of. My love for all God’s people is exercised there, among them, even with all our shortcomings and sin.
It should be the same with our love for our nation. We should not love it to the exclusion of other nations. We all share one God and belong to one common, God-imaging humanity. God has determined the periods and the boundaries of America and every other nation so that people may find their way to him (Acts 17:26–27). Nonetheless, it’s the citizens and statues and buildings and holidays and artists and landscapes and baseball games and cheese fries and hospital delivery rooms of our nation whose names we know. Our love for humanity should be exercised there, among them, even with all our shortcomings and sin.
HOPE FOR THE NATION
None of us knows what’s ahead for the nation. The battle might temporarily grow fiercer. It might temporarily improve. We do know the nation will rage against our God and against his Anointed. The Anointed One, his son Jesus, promised that they will do this until he returns.
Yet the political hopes of the church can remain unchanged, untroubled, untouched. After all, our life is a supernatural life, and our work is a supernatural work, my pastor has said. We cannot raise the dead or give sight to the blind. That was true in the 1790s and the 1950s, and it’s true today. Our work therefore is no harder or easier than it’s ever been. It has always depended entirely on God.
We should not be naïve about the forces of darkness arrayed against us. But fear and withdrawal make no sense for the church. We press on as we always have.
Yet, if I’m going to have any hope for the nation, I cannot place it in the nation. I will place it in healthy churches.
People often extol the genius of the American founders and the wisdom of the Constitution. And let’s give honor where honor is due. Unless you count the tiny republic of San Marino whose documents apparently go back to 1600, America possesses the oldest written constitution in the world. It has needed some fixing along the way, particularly after the Civil War. But it’s generally proven more durable than anything found in the old and great nations of Russia, China, Germany, Egypt, or elsewhere. Not only that, America has arguably proven to be among the most prosperous, strong, and free nations in history.
Yet it seems to me we should give as much credit to the childhood pastors and Christian parents of the American founders as to the men themselves. Nearly every founder was weaned on the moral virtues of Christianity, even if many of them eventually rejected its doctrines. They inconsistently applied the lessons, but they were taught to regard human beings as created in God’s image, each person worthy of dignity and respect. They inherited an understanding of rights and the conscience and equality from a faith that, yes, they variously kept at arm’s length. They took the flowers, even if they cut them from the roots.
God’s common grace grants many a nation better than it deserves, but I have little confidence that America will long remain strong, prosperous, and free without any concept of God’s righteousness and justice somewhere in the background. That’s not because I believe in a civil prosperity gospel: obey God and the nation will be blessed as his chosen people. It’s because I believe the way of God’s righteousness and justice is the way of wisdom. And prosperity and flourishing ordinarily come to the wise. The nation can be strong apart from God’s righteousness, like a totalitarian state is strong. Or it can be “free,” in some impoverished and mangy sense of that word, like a stray dog is free. But it won’t be both.
Which brings me back to healthy churches. If there is hope for the nation, it’s through the witness and work of churches. Our congregations have the opportunity to live transformed lives as a transformed culture through a transformed politics in their own fellowships right now—all for God’s glory and our neighbors’ good. And we will become such heavenly outposts when we focus first not on the public square, but on preaching the Word and making disciples. Together those disciples must grow up to maturity, into Christ, as each part does its work (Eph. 4:13–16). The resonant effects in the home, the marketplace, the public square, and the rest of life then follow.
God does not intend to display his own justice and righteousness and wisdom through the wise, noble, and powerful things of this world, but through the foolish, weak, and despised things. He means to magnify himself not primarily through the US Congress, the New York Times editorial page, or Ivy League philosophy departments, but through Brother Bob, Sister Sue, and Deacon Darnell down at Bumblestew Baptist.
Oh, nations of the earth, watch those three gathered in Jesus’ name to see the way of God’s justice and mercy. They are God’s salt and light for you. Do you sense something distinct in them? See something bright? They are far from perfect, to be sure. But their King is perfect. And their lives together should offer you the first taste of his kingdom.