Happy Birthday, America!  God has let us see our 250^th anniversary.  That is quite a milestone.  Our history is not perfect.  Adam’s sinful children can make a mess out of everything, even something as great as our republic in America.  There have been messes along the way.  There will be more.  We can still be grateful for our country, with a humble kind of gratitude that is honest about who we have been and who we are.  We can be grateful, even as we have concerns about who we are becoming. 

Today, we are the dominant world power and economic engine for commerce, while simultaneously only 4.3% of the world’s population.  God has blessed our country in so many ways.  He has blessed us in the midst of our imperfections and our need for repentance.  “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed…” Lamentations 3:22. 

After January 6^th everyone seems spooked out by affirmations of love of country.  Our fathers before us in the faith can help us.  Enter Saint Augustine and C. S. Lewis.  Lewis reflected upon four tiers of Patriotism, beginning with the healthy and then proceeding, or descending, into toxic degraded levels.  Love of Home and place and roots are natural and healthy.  Love for History and the stories of one’s ancestors are noble, if it inspires noble behavior.  (Can I ask you not to look up my family tree?  The rap sheets are long…and the grace of God is transformative and brings change!  Hallelujah!  What has been, does not have to continue to be in family “traditions.”  Ok, Anderson Hatfield [AKA “Devil Anse”] is my kinfolk!).  Where this admiration gets tricky is when we believe our people are superior to others.  We are better and more righteous than others.  That is an illusion, more a commentary on our hubris than our insight.  That logically descends into what Lewis called “Imperialism.”  The fourth tier of love of country is believing we are so superior that we have a right and even a duty to conquer and dominate lesser peoples. 

I love Saint Augustine’s analysis.  He saw man’s deepest issue in life as disordered loves.  We have got to get our loving right.  Adam’s heart, which we have all inherited, leans into disordered affections.  One of the glories of regeneration and new birth is that it begins to heal of loves and order them in godly trajectories.  Sin springs from disordered loves.  Love of country can slip into idolatry and an arrogant exaltation of “us” and “self” in the midst of “us.”  “We’re # 1!  We are better than others.” 

In America, we have been the recipient of outrageous blessings.  We are great, greatly blessed.  It is important for us, on this birthday to think this through.  Augustine called us to live driven by the dictates (the love of God) of the City of God, not the City of Man (driven by the disordered loves of self, flesh, power, and dominance). 

Augustine would caution us against thinking “lasting empire” thoughts about America.  Lewis would call us away from thoughtless loyalty to earthly states.  But both would argue that one can love their country, and be honest about our need for repentance and faith.

I have found that the peoples of the earth, made in the image of God, reflect the glories of God’s goodness in expressions in their cultures.  Eating with Africans in communal meals taught me how selfish and individualistic we are in the west.  By the way, if they lay down big hunk of injera on the table (a bread looking pancake cooked on the side of a 55 gallon drum with a fire in the bottom) and begin to plop down the community food piles to be grabbed with your hands gloved in pieces of injera that you have torn away from the pancake, and if they lay down a big hunk of Kitfu-stay on that pile.  It is the go-to spot you will want to enjoy.  But watch them eat with joy, participating with each other.  The only way they have survived is through interdependence.  Go to church and enjoy the beautiful colors of the ladies’ dresses in Africa.  The beauty of their faith in Jesus Christ is worn, not on their sleeve, but on their person in those clothes. 

Eating Euro style in Budapest when the owner would not give us the bill…because we had not dined and savored enough of that evening together, taught me that in the pace of American fast food, we have lost the art of savoring the meal as a time to be together.  Dallas Willard always said, “Jesus was never in a hurry.”…identifying yet another area where I am not like Jesus…another call to repentance. 

The gypsies in eastern Europe taught me that joy is impervious to being despised and kicked to the side by everyone.  The Zulus and Xhosa peoples in South Africa taught me that God breaks down all of the middle walls of partition that separate in Jesus Christ.  My Arab friends in the Middle East celebrate the importance of family.  Their housing looks awful, because when a child gets married they build on (without a master plan), and in the end its looks like a condemned mess, but it is family…and they value being together.  My brothers in Egypt taught me that though a minority faith, we can make it…together, through the connection of affection and encouragement.  My Russian buddies showed me the glory of ministering in anonymity and with great joy…they also showed me a picture of delivering Samaritan’s Purse’s Christmas Boxes above the Artic Circle in Siberia…with a sleigh…drawn by reindeer.  My Romanian brothers taught me that staying the course with faith through hard decades is worth it and that Christ sees us in pressure and persecution.  The passion of my Brazilian brothers and sisters belittles the sometimes-cold reception visitors get at our gospel churches.  My Australian friends joy in life and “no worries” attitude helps me to take in stride bends in the road and annoyances that inevitably come in our broken world.

Because we are made in the image of God, all of humanity shares a common humanness.  All of the peoples of the earth have particular manifestations of glory that point to their being made in the image of God.  God’s glory is seen in the fabric of the peoples of the earth.  That tempers exalted views of American as the greatest ever. 

What a privilege to be born in America and live here.  What an honor to reap the benefits of those who have gone before us and worked hard, governed themselves and built this great republic.  Yes, we are a great country.  But, it is indeed true that we do not hold the corner on the market of displaying the glories of Him who created us in His image.  It is possible to simultaneously love our country, be grateful for the chance to live here, and note the glories in the peoples of the earth that reflect their Creator.  There is no need for a ranking of who is greatest and a need for someone to stand up to proclaim how much better we are than others.  We have warts.  We still need grace.  Humanity reflects the glories of the image of God.  We don’t have to make an idol out of our country to appreciate all that God has brought to us with her.  Happy Birthday America!  We are grateful to God for you.  We are praying for you and cheering for your success.