Skip to main content

Dear Christian, Your Hope Isn't in the Next President

Patriotism isn't in the Bible.

At least, not the way us Americans think of patriotism. Americans spend a lot of time alternating between hating and bragging on 'Merica. We like to analyze political campaigns, argue over what should and shouldn't happen in national policy, critique and even hate on our current leaders, and look to the next leader to fix whatever it is we think is wrong with America.

It's great that we can say that America has a "Christian Heritage" (well, kinda...) when it comes to the Founding Fathers and all that jazz, and we should be grateful for it. But let's be real. Expecting a nation made up of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Atheists, Agnostics, etc etc etc to live by Biblical principles is c.o.m.p.l.e.t.e.l.y. unrealistic. No human being, no matter how powerful, will ever be able to fix that.

Which leads to the main point. Patriotism in the sense of ascribing allegiance to a man-formed country is not a concept the Bible condones. Our patriotism as Christians should be ascribed fully to the Kingdom of God- not divided between America and God.

If your nation is the Kingdom of God, act like it. If you advocate among your friends for a particular candidate, advocate twice as hard for Jesus. If you spend time on the debates- figuring out who has the best position, ideas, and arguments- spend twice that on learning more about the Lord and ways to defend your faith.

I'm NOT saying don't vote, and that you shouldn't pray for our country's leaders. But I AM saying: don't set your hope in one human, and don't freak out when "the wrong one" gets elected. Nothing happens outside of God's control. The world won't end until God hits the power down button. 

We are strangers and aliens here- America is neither our home nor our hope. Our savior isn't in the next POTUS. Our savior is Jesus Christ, and our hope is eternity with him. Live like it.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maybe It's Not So Bad....

So apparently I don't learn my lessons very well. I was going back through my recent posts, and they were about thankfulness and giving God control of my life. This past week, I've been bombarded with small and medium sized things that require a reaction from me. And my reactions haven't been very good. Instead of looking for ways that God can use the situation, I've been complaining. A lot. Yesterday, when yet another thing had to be dealt with, I was reminded of Paul. Here I am, worried about how to fix my truck and if I can get all my homework done in time. There's Paul, rejoicing because he GETS to suffer for Christ. And he doesn't just have a lot of homework. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits...
Post a Comment
Read more

More Funnies.

To continue the "laugh at Moriah" post from like 2011... I went to DC with my college roomie this last summer. We were taking the train in and coming back after dark, and I reasoned that taking my pocket knife (read: 4 inch blade) was a logical step. Museum security checkpoints, however didn't line up with my reasoning. I was told to "get rid of it" if I wanted to come in. So, for the next 4 museums we visited, we took a stroll through the bushes before and after to hide and retrieve my knife. At the end of the day, we headed home. With the knife. Take that, Smithsonian security. Every fall, our school does the TP Game (yeah, my school is awesome). First game of the season, and when we score the first basket, we incur a technical foul by throwing rolls of [clean] toilet paper on the court. Well, the students living off campus usually help themselves to a few rolls of school provided game TP for their houses. We lived off campus, but instead of walking out w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Remember & Expect

As I’ve been thinking about what I want my focus to be this next year, the two words that come to mind are remember and expect. Currently, I don’t have a great relationship with those words. When your whole life (ok that’s a LITTLE dramatic but sometimes it sure feels that way can I get an amen 😫) seems like it’s been one. thing. after. another, it’s easy to get to a place where you can only remember the hard and you start to expect that the rest of life will continue to suck. You become apathetic. Cynical. And a delightful ray of sunshine to be around 🙄. I was reading Deuteronomy 8, in which Moses reminds the Israelites what God did for them in the forty years since leaving Egypt- forty years that, from a human point of view, seemed like a pointless, dead-end waste of time. It was miserable. It made no sense. And yet, God was in the details: they did not lack anything they needed. Moses also reminded them to expect what God had promised them, even though at that moment they were sti...
Post a Comment
Read more