Patriotism

I feel as if I ought to post something, but I'm very tired! Here's something I wrote on facebook a while ago (4th of July?) but never posted. I think I was afraid it sounded too offensive to some of my friends' more defensive sensibilities, but rereading it makes me think otherwise. Here you go!

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I am one of those who has had some real problems with patriotism. I never saw the logic of it, and never heard a consistent definition for it.

I think I first started having these issues in middle school, when I heard the definition for "nationalism:" the idea that your country and its inhabitants are inherently better than all others. To me, this sounded like what a lot of Americans called patriotism, and it sounded wrong and dangerous (this attitude in multiple countries was a huge contributor to both world wars). Also, I had a very paranoid aversion to the pledge of allegiance...it freaked me out that I had learned to recite it before I knew what it meant. I don't know what that has to do with patriotism, but I felt it was connected at the time.

Now hear me out, because I know I have some vehemently patriotic friends, God bless you, that are ready to jump all over me already. I'm describing a journey here, so stick with me to the end.

When we entered Iraq, I heard a lot of people say that God was on our side. I even heard people say that we are God's country. Just war theories aside, we are certainly not the hand of God to punish or bless the world.

I know what America is not. America is not perfect. Neither is America God's country. America is not a Christian nation - founded on, informed by Christian principles and ideals, sure. But our direction and our focus is not Christianity, and most certainly not Christ.

America is not always the land of the free. Millions and millions of unborn dead cry out silently for justice. America is not always the home of the brave. Politicians waver and fall under the pressure of high-profile interest groups instead of standing for what they know is right.

Patriotism: love and devotion for your country.

What is my country? What am I supposed to love? Is my country defined by the people that comprise it? Because I love the citizens of Ukraine just as well as the citizens of the U.S. Is it defined by the principles it was built upon? I don't agree with every one of these principles, and our country is racing away from the ideas that it was once composed of.

You hear a bit of bitterness? I really am sorry for it. It's something that God is extracting from me, painfully but surely, ever since He helped me to understand patriotism in a new way.

I think my patriotism was born, not when I became able to define "country," but when I understood love and devotion in a new way.

This realization has been a long one, years long, but it culminated only a couple months ago in my reading of "Orthodoxy" by my man G.K. Chesterton:

"The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more..." "Let us suppose we are confronted with desperate thing - say America. If we think what is really best for America we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of America: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Canada. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of America: for then it will remain America, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love America: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved America, then America would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; America would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved America as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is THEIRS, America in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her."

This is something I think we all can relate to. Because, as Chesterton also says, "there is the great lesson of "Beauty and the Beast"; that a thing must be loved BEFORE it is loveable."

I love America with a completely irrational love. I love it because of my vision of what it can be, what men have died so that it can be, and what every day we're trying to shape it into. I love it for the freedom I have to protest its frivolity and pride, and I see hope every day that we slowly change into something different.

So today, I send out special thanks. Thank you to the people that began this whole thing - to Washington, Adams, and even Jefferson (although I bet we would have some heated debates about his funky theology). To the countless others that had a dream of independence and responsibility that we are trying to rediscover. Thank you to all the men and women who have died, and those who put their life on the line today, while I sit at home whining about the pledge of allegiance. You have it figured out - thanks for protecting my rights while I struggle to understand them. Thank you to the politicians who listen to people and conscience instead of pressure (read here: my dad).

And thank you all for loving me in the same way that I love America: that even though I'm a mess, there's an untapped greatness inside of me. You see not who I am, but who God created me to be. And maybe you love my little quirks, too, just like I love America's: jazz music, free museums, free enterprise, cancer research and Hank Thoreau.

May God continue to bless America.