There was a time in which America was seen as the shining city set on a hill. We truly believed the propaganda that we had evolved the government and society into the best balance of freedom and order ever known and that it served as a magnet for humanity living under the oppression of want, dictatorship, or repression. The Ugly American was as much about this arrogance as it was anything else. At some point Americans seem to have given up on the exportation of our democratic experiment and turned inward.
The tumultuous years of the 1960s and 1970s left us in the midst of a revolution against the very thing we once thought was our glory. It began a conflict between those who were shamed or embarrassed by the American dream and those who still promoted it as the end all of world conflict, injustice, inequity, and success. Now, looking back over half a century, we see another view. Those who have come to hate America. They are looking to dismantle America in pursuit of their own version of diversity, equity, justice, and access. The goal has moved from the safety and security of a home, a family, and an income to self-expression and to a rigid tolerance in which everyone is allowed to think and feel what they desire except those who disagree.
It is the same pursuit of rest and the same idyllic but false image of Eden that fuels the fire under the college discontent and the stance on behalf of those oppressed by the mighty forces of democracy. The marchers are not in pursuit of a family and home and occupation but radical self-expression which seems to have little use for or regard for marriage and family or things in general (technology being the main exception). It is a restlessness that is the same as the past but for different reasons and in pursuit of a different end. Yet without God it is as flawed and failed as those movements before.
At least the movements in the past paid lip service to religion and in particular to Christianity. That did little to focus the Gospel and a great deal to confuse it. Now the march of progress has performed a friendly takeover of Christianity to remake the Gospel away from sin and redemption to the woke agendas that are behind every secular educational institution and the motive behind the use of freedom in government and the judiciary. Orthodox Christianity has no place in the minds or hearts of those who restlessly march in pursuit of their version of Eden restored.
In the end, Augustine might have reminded us all that it is not the world that needs rest or rescuing but people who live in the valley of the shadow with the shackles of our sin impossible for us to remove. I pray for America and for the kind of life my children and grandchildren will enjoy here but I have little interest in rescuing a nation from itself, or this version of itself. Instead, my prayer is for those who hear the Word of God and believe it. Their souls will find rest the world and our nation cannot offer. But I will labor on for the cause of freedom and for the responsible use of that freedom and for the defense of that freedom that has enabled me to enjoy a better life.
As we light our firecrackers and burn our burgers this Fourth of July, it might do us a bit of good to remember that the soul's rest lies in Christ but the good of this nation is always made better by a people who know what sin is, know their own sin, and know the answer to sin in the blood of Christ that cleanses us from all sin. Christians should disavow themselves of kingdom building in the name of God but we should never fail to do good where we can and with what we have been given. Thanks be to God when a nation and its governance allows us to do just that.
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