Christian Nationalism seems to be the battle cry these days. After all, we are a Christian nation, right?
I do have a lot to say about that, about whether a Nation can be Christian…but that’s for later I think.
Today, I’ve been thinking about what makes America America.
If you are reading this, you probably know the story of Israel. Allow me take a moment for a recap.
Abraham was called to follow God. And, to make a very long story short, he did. He married Sarah, they had Isaac. Isaac married Rebekah and they had the twins, Esau and Jacob. Jacob married Leah and Rachel, who between the three of them had 12 sons. They were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin.
Josephs brothers sold him into slavery, where he eventually ended up in Egypt. While there, through a number of miraculous and very difficult circumstances, Joseph became a leader in Egypt, second only to Pharaoh. There was famine in the land lasting seven years, and through that circumstance Joseph was reunited with his family, bringing them all to live in Egypt, in the land of Goshen.
Some 700 years later, out of fear of the number of Israelites living in Goshen, they had become slaves, and Moses was born.
God called Moses to set his people free from slavery. You may have heard of the plagues of Egypt? This is where they fit in to history, and finally Pharaoh allowed Israel to leave.
Now, Israel is in the wilderness, in the process of transitioning between a nation of slaves, to a nation of God.
From Exodus to Deuteronomy we read the commandments that God gave to this people. These commandments, these laws, were meant to separate Israel from every other nation. It is the following of these laws that demonstrated that Israel was other than every other nation. God’s chosen people, and very different from every other nation in justice, in mercy, in morality.
We find, as history goes on, that God sends His prophets to Israel to rebuke them every time they disobey the law. Especially the leadership. Because, without the law, without adherence to the law He had set before them, they were no longer different. They appeared to be the same as all of the nations surrounding them. Without the law, they were essentially the same as every other nation.
We have the Constitution. Now I do not mean to put the Constitution on the level of the laws of God. Bear in mind that I am speaking of what makes a nation, not a faith.
The Constitution is the law that sets America apart from every other nation. “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liverty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Every time we disregard this law, this document, this foundational instrument of our government, we become less recognizable. When our leadership wantonly disregards the laws, articles and amendments, they are leading us in a direction that makes this great country less recognizable as the place of justice, tranquility, safety and peace that sets us apart from every other nation.
Although, America was built on Judeo/Christian principles, it was not built on the Bible. It was built on the Constitution. To protect America, we must protect the Constitution.
Leave a Reply