I thought I’d get this blog going again sooner, but I spent the last several months creating a website for our writer’s group and a narrating a new audio book. Now I have more capacity. However, I intend to re-post many of the blogs I accidentally deleted.
Happy Independence Day!
A few months ago, I was visiting with new acquaintances. We were talking about our journeys: raising & launching children, personal faith-walks and church experience. I’ve wondered if you can live this (modern, western Christian) life without church-hurt and religious trauma. Or is it reserved for second-generation Christians—those raised up in it?
Honestly, the tone shifted to blame. We all had been hurt, and had people we dearly loved driven away from the church. Churches injure so many. Christians are judgemental and hypocritical. Organized religion is one mouth and hundreds of ears—not a healthy body. Really, it’s all the church’s fault…
But part way through the conversation, I felt the Spirit say to me: You are the church.
I am the Church.
I changed the topic.
However, after processing it over the past weeks, I can own it. I’m part of the big-C church, corporate body of Christ. Also, I have sat on pews and folding chairs in the little-c local church. In both places, I’ve been wounded. I’ve also been catty, self-absorbed and mislead people about my own dysfunction. Sometimes it was because there was merely a thread holding me together, but sometimes it was just practice. Either way, I have been more concerned about what I wore than what I said, was dismissive and quick to lash out to protect myself instead of others. And…so quick to judge.
It is the way human judgement functions: If I can place fault on someone for their circumstance, then there is a path to prevent those circumstances from happening to me. I can control my destiny.
And being in control is very American. We control our freedom with the second amendment. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we can help God out there.) We control our freedom by “helping” other countries choose their government as it aligns with our world-politic goals, or destroying them when it does not. We control our freedom to consume by pillaging resources, grateful for “the blessing” that we are on the money-side of capitalism.
Yes… I do eat avocados.
I am American.
Freedom is an acceptable idol we lift up in our sanctuary. It probably isn’t a false god if you thank God-Most-High for it. Nationalism is allowable because our forefathers came here for religious freedom. Certainly not societal equalization, and the opportunity to prosper financially.
We have independence because we probably fought harder for it than other countries, or at least we did it in the name of God, so He blessed it. We also toss His name into our anthems and pledges. So it’s fine if He shares the throne with our flag—right? We are part of the redeemed. We can look across the ocean at Babylon. And shake our heads. Forgetting one important thing…
Without Christ, I am Babylon.
In the new sanctuary we are attending, the American flag shares the stage with the cross and the Christian flag. I’m very aware it is privilege allowing me to bristle at the equal prominence—while believers under other flags meet in secret, risking life and family.
In part, I am celebrating the freedom that I have taken for granted this week. And I hope you do too. But, I will be keeping two things in mind:
First, a statement from my prayer partner, “Really, do we have any freedom except through Christ?”
And second, something my daughter recently quoted to me. “None of us is free until all of us are free.“
May we not exercise or worship our freedom at the cost of another’s. Hang on—may we not hold anything more dear than Christ.
I heard recently that the Roman Army swore allegiance to Cesar and the gods before entering service. The action was called a sacrament. The early church took a different sacrament of body and blood, and I think much of the political statements in the New Testament are lost in our context.
Patriotism is not holy. Relinquishing freedom as a devoted slave isn’t sweet affection. It is extreme loyalty. So, while we lift up our country and, hand over heart, swear allegiance to it alone, think of one more thing true citizen of heaven:
“Any society whom Babylon’s cap fits must wear it. Any society which absolutizes its own economic prosperity at the expense of others comes under Babylon’s condemnation.”
― Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation