Why Keep Writing?
As we’ve seen, the foundational value of the United States does not align with the Kingdom of God. At its very core, our nation shows it cannot match the will of our Lord.
What, then, could be left to say? If America and God are so far apart on something this fundamental, why keep writing this blog at all? Haven’t I proven my point?
There are a couple reasons I choose to keep writing. First, it’s fun! I like getting to think about this sort of thing, and the internet is gracious enough to allow me to post what I have to say. Since joy is a gift from God, it seems perfectly appropriate to keep writing just because it’s something I like to do.
More importantly, though, is the motivation I get from something that happened in the earliest days of this project.
In June of 2020, I was living in Phoenix. During that year’s election, Arizona was an important battleground in what would become one of the most contentious presidential elections in American history. One day, I heard that one of the largest Assemblies of God churches in the area—a denomination for which I served as a pastor for several years—was hosting a rally for Donald Trump. While I’m sure the former president will feature in several future posts, for now I’ll summarize my thoughts on him by saying he is deeply divisive. I can think of few figures in American society who inspire more extreme reactions than our forty-fifth president.
Out of this conviction I messaged both the church and our local denominational leadership, expressing my concern that such a polarizing figure would drive away people the church might otherwise reach with the gospel. While the church never responded at all, the message I received from an assistant at the Assemblies’ regional office breaks my heart to this day. At the close of a rather long statement of condemnation for “the left” and vociferous praise for then-president Trump, my sister in Christ closed on this gruesome note:
“The only ones ‘driven far away’ from [the church hosting President Trump] will be those who are haters before this day ever happens.”
Before I continue, I should acknowledge I had a role in compelling such a divisive statement from this woman. When I shared this message with my own pastor and his team, they were shocked. Many of them knew this administrator personally, and could not believe that she would say something so plainly dismissive of people God longs to know. To be fair, much of her anger likely stemmed from my initial message, which among other things accused the church of hosting the rally mostly as a cash grab. Several years removed from the exchange, I can confess I was just as much a product of American politics during that election as this woman. We were both angry, suspicious, and divisive. We were what our country had made us, rather than what Jesus wanted us to be.
More importantly, we were both driven far from the will of God. In this case, this otherwise kind, thoughtful, godly woman had become a gatekeeper for the Kingdom. Our nation drove her to believe all these supposed “haters” wanted nothing to do with Jesus, all because they didn’t support a particular political candidate. For this woman—and so, so many others—the United States took on the role of deciding who wanted to know more about the saving grace of Jesus.
The implications of this belief are beyond tragic. It confines the spread of the gospel to the narrow geographic, racial, and social boundaries of a single political party. It demands we believe in a person—often a presidential candidate—as proof of our belief in God. Personally, it means people like my wife never come to follow Jesus. They wouldn’t even be able to make it in the door of a church.
Most importantly: it’s just not what God wants.
These are the reasons why I will continue to write until the Lord tells me to stop. Devotion to American values—and the toxic brand of politics those values created—is driving American Christians so far from the heart of God that we have forgotten Jesus’ great commission: the call to go and make disciples of everyone. We have sinfully joined love of our nation with worship of our God. We have replaced Saint Peter at the metaphorical pearly gates, except we’re demanding to know how people voted in the last election.
As a follower of Jesus, I cannot sit and watch my country hijack the name, will, and grace of God. America does not and will never decide who does and does not desire to know the love of Jesus. To make this clear, I’ll spend as long as I’m able clarifying the differences between our nation and our God. At the end of the day, I want everyone to know we must make a choice. It is impossible to live for both God and country: we have to pick one or the other. I direct your attention to the title of this site if you’re not sure which I think we should choose.
For the next few posts, I want us to understand just how far back these differences go. Turning to the moment of our nation’s founding, we’ll see that those who played the largest roles in the creation of the United States held deeply problematic ideas about who Jesus was, much less what it meant to follow him. We’ll see why the United States—at its founding—had little if any hope of aligning itself with the will of God. Once we see this, we can get that much closer to recognizing just how different our nation and our Lord really are, and get back to what Christians should be doing: worshiping Jesus with all our heart, mind, and strength.