Drive by any church with a flagpole, and what flag do you see? Probably Old Glory, right?
If there is a “Christian flag,” where do you see it? Flying alone, or with Old Glory? And if they’re both flying, which flies higher?
American Christians have every reason to be grateful that we live in a political system that has allowed us to worship freely as we do many things more freely than most people in other times and spaces. But that love and gratitude for a system that once allowed us to be free have—yes, I’m painting with a broad brush here—transmogrified into acquiescence to, if not worship of, anything associated with Old Glory.
The Christians of North Korea and North Vietnam suffered and still suffer horribly under Communism. Have American Christians made life easier for them by bombing them?
Collectivism has made life horrible for Cuban and Venezuelan Christians. Have American Christians made life easier for them by cheering for sanctions that further restrict their access to the necessities of daily life?
Life under Islam in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and Libya is no picnic for Christians. Has starting wars that have resulted in them being killed and displaced fulfilled the command of him who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers”?
We’re now strangling the economies of Iran and China, where the church is arguably growing faster than anywhere else in the world despite government and local opposition. This is how we fulfill the Great Commission?
Can you blame Putin and the governments of Laos and Myanmar for banning Evangelicalism because they regard it as a tool of American imperialism?
Well, now we have a taste of our own “generosity” brought to us by “the powers that be … ordained of God” and wrapped in Old Glory: shortages of necessities, persecution of the innocent (those in “nonessential” businesses), incessant lying propaganda—and locked church doors, with Christians cowering at home.
Paul wrote Romans 13 to readers many of whom knew the Ten Commandments and knew that the prohibitions against murder, theft, and deceit added objective standards for measuring how well the faithful are to love their neighbors as themselves and do for others what they would have others do for them. He was teaching them how to live under oppressors who routinely violated those prohibitions. He was not making the powerful exempt from the prohibitions. Nor was he telling them they could get around them by using terms like collateral damage, taxation, and spin.
Paul in Romans 1 warns his readers that God will “give them over to” what they truly desire and in Romans 2 tells them God will reward them for their deeds. Well, American Christians have wanted a government that routinely violates the prohibitions of Sinai, have flown its flag higher than the cross, and are now supporting its destruction of the livelihoods of the politically unconnected and the economy as a whole in the name of fighting a virus that is not as deadly as others we have tolerated.
My guess—guess—is that this is just the beginning of hard times. The riots and violent responses and restrictions and food lines and shivering and mass death are still future. The first shall be last and the last shall be first, and the destruction of the United States will make the ears of all who hear of it tingle. Our nation will disappear without a trace when the electricity goes out and all our memories and literature are gone.
But maybe in our great-grandchildren’s day the curse that God put his people under in 1 Samuel 8:18—“You will beg for relief from the king you have chosen, but the LORD will not answer you on that day”—will be repealed, and the church will stand for justice, make peace, and see true prosperity.
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