Of America and Christian Nations

Israel as seen in the Old Tes­ta­ment had the prob­lem of repeat­ed­ly going after and wor­ship­ing false gods. Even dur­ing one of his­to­ries most piv­otal acts, while Moses and God were con­vened upon Sinai, the Israelites fash­ioned a gold­en calf which they could worship.

And repeat­ed­ly, God rebuked them, going so far as to say they went “a‑whoring” after false gods. Four of the Ten Com­mand­ments direct­ly con­cern faith­ful­ness and loy­al­ty to the Lord God. 

Amer­i­ca is repeat­ed­ly called “Chris­t­ian” by those who desire the Ten Com­mand­ments to be pub­licly dis­played and who believe cer­tain sins (not all of them, by any means) ought to be emphat­i­cal­ly out-lawed. But the first of Amer­i­ca’s Bill of Rights guar­an­tees the free­dom of religion.

If Amer­i­ca is a “Chris­t­ian nation,” one of the first rights guar­an­teed would not be the free­dom of reli­gion. Such plu­ral­i­ty has always been abom­i­na­tion to He who is jeal­ous for our souls, who rec­og­nizes all oth­er gods as false, and extends eter­nal life to those who believe into Him.

If Amer­i­ca was to be a Chris­t­ian nation, the Con­sti­tu­tion would be over­turned. The Scrip­tures would be the final author­i­ty, and judg­ments would be righteous.

How­ev­er, Chris­tians are called to be a nation unto them­selves and to Christ, a pecu­liar peo­ple called out unto His name, whose cit­i­zen­ship is in Heav­en. We are not called to trans­form the polit­i­cal land­scape of the world; Christ will make good on that when He, the Branch of Jesse, sets up His King­dom over all the earth.:”(See Isa­iah 11 for a won­der­ful descrip­tion of this king­dom.)”: Rather, we who live with­in Amer­i­ca’s bor­ders are bound to live in har­mo­ny with Amer­i­ca’s law. We are not called to twist it to fit our view of Amer­i­can his­to­ry, nor should we seek to force our own rules for liv­ing upon one of the world’s nations.

Our ser­vice to the world is just that: ser­vice. Preach the Gospel. Feed the hun­gry. Give drink to the thirst. Clothe the naked. Care for wid­ows and the father­less.:”(James 1:27)”: It is a life chang­ing mission.

Jesus once said to let the dead bury their dead.:”(Matthew 8:22)”: In this one state­ment, Jesus cre­at­ed a divi­sion, sep­a­rat­ing the works and obser­vances of this world from fol­low­ing Him. Our con­cern isn’t to see the lost buried; our con­cern is to preach the gospel so that the dead may have life!

I may be mak­ing a stretch, but I think this is an accu­rate state­ment: Let the dead gov­ern themselves.

It should not con­cern us who lost peo­ple want to mar­ry, who they want to give their mon­ey to, or what mon­u­ments they want dis­played on their lands! If we prop­er­ly spent as much time as we should invest­ing in the work and ser­vice of the Lord, read­ing and study­ing the Bible dai­ly, and exer­cis­ing pure reli­gion, there would be no time left to mount huge offen­sive activist projects in order to shove our pearls down the snouts of swine.:”(Thereby gag­ging the swine and defil­ing our pearls.)”:

Amer­i­ca is not a Chris­t­ian nation, and we ought not waste the time giv­en to us on Earth attempt­ing to make it such. Such a glo­ri­ous king­dom ruled by Christ will come in His own time. It is not for us to cre­ate one of our own liking.