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.

Assume Love

Lately....

every song on the radio touches my soul.

every person I know makes me laugh - not because they're funny, but because the joy in knowing them has to spill out.

hearing a beautiful truth makes me dance - in my room, in my car, on the sidewalk.

love between friends has become something wondrous.

I've been having feelings of joy, and it's all because of a realization that I'm finding difficult to articulate, even to myself.

Maybe God's grace isn't an oasis in a horrible world. Maybe God's grace is so humongous that it overshadows the sin, overpowers it, overwhelms it. Lately when I look at the world, I see love instead of darkness.

Maybe I'm not a sinner. Yeah, I sin, every day, I know. But what if that's not who I am, not the consummation of my identity? Without Christ, I'm a sinner. But with Him I'm glowing, full of hope, changing, reforming.

A couple of weeks ago I was telling a sweet friend of mine about my brilliant 1-year old nephew, Elliot. He had a bit of a "dag tood" - a bad attitude - and was mumbling to me "ma ma ma" in a grumpy voice because he was mad at Megan. It was a funny story, and after laughing my friend said, "oh, that little sinner!"

Technically, she didn't say anything wrong. But inside my heart hurt, because when I see Elliot, I don't see a sinner. I see God's love pouring not only into him, but out of him. I see a vessel of joy and comfort and glory.

I'm not saying the world is, or people are, "basically good" (although I think this feeling is the kind of excitement that motivates that theology). I'm saying God's poured SO much love into me, His love is what I see when I look at myself. But for the grace of God, I know where I would stand. But I feel like we're always talking about where we would be "if not for God's grace." Okay - but now I have God's grace! What now? Shouldn't I see myself differently? Shouldn't I see the world differently?

We are most certainly not "just passing through." We are here to change the world.

There is knowing something. Hearing it, saying it, memorizing it...

and then there is knowing something. Feeling it. Living it.

I now know that God's love and comfort offers more than enough joy to overwhelm any fear.

I now know why people say, "assume love."

, originally uploaded by nikolinelr.

Break forth! Shout joyfully together, you waste places of Jerusalem. For Yahweh has comforted His people - He has redeemed Jerusalem.

Isaiah 52:9

I am the problem.

I was reading Blue Like Jazz a couple of months ago. It made me cry like a baby more than once. Donald Miller is my hero, you see - I disagree with him politically, doctrinally, and who knows how else, but he is still my hero. He gives me an awesome picture of authenticity.

I think authenticity is hugely important. If God says, "My power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9), then we need to be open about our weaknesses - we need to shout them out! "Hello, my name is Sarah, and I'm a terrible mess of pride and self-hatred...I hardly know how that's possible." As uncomfortable as it may be for some of us, it's important to be open about it, vulnerable. Paul only ever boasts in two things - did you know that? He boasts in Christ, and he boasts in his own weaknesses.

That's so hard for us, though. Well, it's hard for me. It's much more easy to get caught up in the weaknesses of others - in pointing them out, "helping" them out. It's easy to see weaknesses in the system: our school's organization, the nation's policy, our family's dysfunction. I'm not saying we should ignore those things, but I am saying we tend to blame "them," whoever they are, for most of the problems in the world.

Here's what Donald Miller says in Chapter 2 (which contains the best explanation of human depravity I've ever read. Read it sometime.):

I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest.

The thing I realized on the day we protested, on the day I had beers with Tony, was that it did me no good to protest America's responsibility in global poverty when I wasn't even giving money to my church, which has a terrific homeless ministry. I started feeling very much like a hypocrite.

Do I want social justice for the oppressed, or do I just want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I don't have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself. I am not browbeating myself here; I am only saying that true change, true life-giving, God-honoring change would have to start with the individual. I was the very problem I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read "I AM THE PROBLEM!"

I have since wanted to do this very often - step into a group of protesters and tell them it's me - it's them. We need to fix us.

I wrote a mission statement for my life one time. Part of it said, "I will be honest about who I am, and excited about changing into who God wants me to be." You would be surprised how difficult this is. You would be surprised how easy it is to pretend you're more knowledgeable than you really are, to act like the type of person you want to be known as, rather than the type of person you know you should be. Well, maybe you wouldn't be so surprised.

"I know now, from experience, that the path to joy winds through this dark valley." Page 23.

Or like God says, "I give grace to the humble." Sort of. 1 Peter 5:5.

I intend to change the world. This sounds very big. Well, it is very big, isn't it? Because the world is huge, and, as Megan said (although I can't recall why), "I am very little."

But.

As I see myself slowly changing into the person God created me to be, I see the people around me change, too. A man at IWU said one time that we are like puddles of water, and God is the waterfall. Trying to fill each other on our own is completely draining...but if we place ourselves right under Him, we can't help but drench everyone around us.

I really think I can change the world. Back to 2 Corinthians 12:

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

God already changed the world in a HUGE way. He's given me the chance to be in on it, to tap into this huge, world-changing power. "Just become weak."

Or, in my case, just be real about how weak you really are.

So here is Sarah raw:

I am a mess. Sometimes...I feel like changing into Your likeness is never going to happen. This is because I constantly feel like I'm regressing...and that is probably because I am. I have so much head knowledge of You that I feel like I could scoop it out of my brain with a shovel. It feels ancillary and cluttered. But my heart knowledge of You is so weak. I want to rest my head on your chest so that I can feel your heartbeat, live your heartbeat. I want to stop reading books about You and start writing them.

Semper reformanda. We say this because it was one of the battle cries of the Reformation - always reforming. They meant it about the church, but I mean it about myself - because I am the problem.

And God is the solution. And maybe, if I stop presenting the world with a cardboard cutout of myself, then the real me, the weak, God-powered me, can be part of the solution, too.

Next time I roll my eyes at you (I do this often), or lift an eyebrow in derision (I do this more often), remind me that I'm a punk, and that you love me anyway. Next time I get hypocritically...critical about something irrelevant, remind me that I should love my enemies, get over myself, and remember that passion without patience is annoying and ineffective.

I think I'm going to change the world in a big way, maybe something bigger than I've imagined. Maybe I won't even know it in this lifetime. But I can say with certainty (although I can offer no proof) that more world-changing is done in the small things, in the mundane, than in world-recognized greatness.

1 Corinthians 10:31. Whether you eat, or drink, or whatever you do - do it all for God's glory.