When I was younger, I travelled to several countries and visited lots of cathedrals and churches. Never, to my recollection, did I ever see the flag of the country I was in displayed inside the church or cathedral I was visiting. When I returned to the US, I never gave the subject any more thought.
Several years later, I became a Christian and again visited several churches in America. In a few, I noticed that a flag was set up on the dais where the preacher would give the sermon. I spoke to my husband about it and said it bothered me to see a national flag set up in a church. He had seen it before, and it didn’t bother him one way or the other.
I have thought about it since and have come to the conclusion that we should keep our Christianity separate from our national affiliation. There is nothing wrong with national pride and patriotism, but our first allegiance must always be to Jesus Christ. We serve a King who is over all earthly kingdoms and reigns from his heavenly kingdom.
If, for some reason or another, the country we are living in outlaws Christianity and forbids us to gather together, pray and read our Bibles, we will have a decision to make. Will we obey our heavenly King or follow the laws of the land concerning our beliefs? We only have to think of the millions of Christians living under Communist rule to realize the dilemma that is created by a government passing laws against the Church.
Christianity does command that we be good citizens of the country we are living in. We are to follow the laws, pay our taxes, pray for our leaders and seek the welfare of the city where we live. If called into the military, we must follow our beliefs and serve wherever our beliefs allow us to.
Christians need to remember their history and recall that some countries have sought to incorporate their political beliefs into their churches. As an example, there are still churches in Germany working to get rid of the Nazi symbols placed in them without destroying the architecture of the church itself. These churches should serve as an example of what Christo-Nationalism looks like and why we would want to avoid it.
We should never seek to impose our nationalistic beliefs on our Christianity. Instead, we should serve the country we are living in because of our beliefs and seek to be the best citizens we can be under the existing laws of the land.
All through the campaign and now during the Trump presidency, I have watched him play the media over and over. “There is no such thing as bad publicity,” is a quote often attributed to P.T. Barnum. It would seem to me that the President believes this and takes advantage of the media practically on a daily basis.
In our country, there are two main parties, Democrat and Republican. Most people are a member of one or the other, and may or may not espouse their party’s platform. That is how our country works: we vote, elect an individual, and either two or four years later, we get to decide to re-elect that individual or vote someone else into office.
As citizens of America, we are all partakers in the grief we felt when we heard about the shootings in Las Vegas. We have a shared sense of grief whenever something like this happens in our country. The shared grief is part of what molds us and forms our national identity.
Lately, I have heard many pastors and teachers say we are living in the last days before the return of Jesus. I don’t like to take anyone’s word for something like that, so I decided to examine the evidence for myself.
One of the hardest things Jesus ever told his followers was, “Love Your Enemies.” As a believer in Jesus Christ, I have been challenged by this command ever since I first read it. How do we truly love our enemies?
Recently, my cousin received a kidney transplant. His kidneys had not functioned well for years, but he finally came to the point where he needed dialysis. He sent a letter out letting people know he needed a kidney, and many people volunteered to be a donor. Unfortunately, everyone was rejected for one reason or another. Finally, he transferred to another transplant center, and they began the process of reassessing his potential donors. After a while, a new doctor thought he had found the right match. It was my cousin’s wife who had been the first donor on the list, but had been rejected because of her allergies. Within a month, they were both in the hospital awaiting surgery. Both surgeries went well, and they were both out of the hospital within a week.
When we think about love, we don’t usually associate the word with hate. But real love, true love, agape love, it hates…people, no, but the wrongs of this world, yes. Here are some things that love hates:
The book of James tells us that our lives are like “a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.” When I read those words in my twenties and thirties, I understood them but they didn’t speak to me as strongly as they do thirty years later. Now, looking back on my life, it does seem like a vapor that has come and can be gone very quickly.
Jesus was talking to a lawyer about the two most important commandments. When they got to the second one: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” the lawyer, wanting to justify himself said, “Who is my neighbor?” He was probably hoping that Jesus would say, “The guy who lives next to you, you know, the one who is so similar to you that you can easily identify with him.”
