So you want a Christian nation.
Let’s pretend, for a moment, that Jesus didn’t make it clear his kingdom was not of this world, and his followers were to separate themselves from it. Let’s pretend that Jesus called us to make a Christian nation in addition to the commandment he did give: to love Him with all our heart, soul, and mind and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Are you sure you’d want to live in that nation? Because a Christian nation doesn’t declare its holiness with a loud voice or sound its trumpet to insist it’s pure. A Christian nation demonstrates the radical theology of Christ through the good deeds it enacts, the grace it shows, and the selflessness it exhibits, asking for no honor and no glory.
A Christian nation would be one of compassion, of empathy, of healing, of hope, of love. It would be known as Christian by the fruits it bore, not by the grandstanding of its citizens in the political square. Not by those citizens using Scripture to justify how rotten their fruit has become.
Oh, you practice God’s love all the time, do you? In your church? With your family? Maybe you give money to the homeless? Great. That love is easy. That love asks only the bare minimum of God’s people. Jesus didn’t say, “Thank you, dear followers, for doing that much.” Jesus said, “Bless those who curse you.” He said, “Pray for those who mistreat you.” He said, “Do good to those who hate you.” He said, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.” He said, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.”
What that love looks like is loving all the people of the world, for God has breathed his life into every one of us. That love is not limited to those within our borders, to the communities we happened to born into. That love is for everyone, especially for the poor and the desperate. For the people so scared for their lives and their children’s lives that they travel thousands of miles for the chance to live in a nation blessed with safety and security, the nation we claim is Christian, the nation that revels in telling others “Oh, you should have run for your lives the right way.”
Let’s pretend that crossing our nation’s border illegally is criminally worse than a misdemeanor such as public drunkenness (it’s not). Let’s pretend that a good number of people who’ve had their children separated from them aren’t seeking asylum (they are), some for reasons declared no longer acceptable after they made their journeys. Let’s pretend our immigration system isn’t broken (it is), that it doesn’t take half a decade or more for legal immigration applications to even be considered (it does).
Even if all that were true (it isn’t), we would have to twist Jesus’s words very hard to pretend He favored following all laws made by man. Jesus, the same person who asked, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?” when challenged by the Pharisees for daring to heal the sick on the Sabbath and thus breaking their laws. Jesus is very clear, time and again in the Gospels, that some laws should not be followed if they interfere with the greatest law: to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, minds, and souls, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
The Jesus I grew up with? His fury was not for the law breakers. It was for those who condemned Him when the needy came to Him for comfort — the trampled on, the poor, the children, the fatherless, the refugee who needed love and compassion. Jesus’s rage was reserved for the rule minders, for the Pharisees who insisted the law must be followed to the letter. The people who’d forgotten that the root of those laws was God’s love, and if those laws no longer demonstrated God’s love when enforced, they were no laws at all. Without that root, the law is pointless, nothing but an excuse for the rule minders to delight in shaming others, in punishments that reject grace, in the tearing of children from parents who’ve cried out to God for protection, for understanding, for a place they could lower their heads without fear of murder in the night.
The rule minders call the fulfillment of such laws justice. But it’s an insincere belief. If they truly believed Christians were obligated to observe all laws of this nation, this “Christian” nation, they wouldn’t have spent the last 40 years claiming the only thing that mattered was overturning one particular law they themselves have judged unjust. They wouldn’t have spent the last decade claiming we shouldn’t bother making more laws, because criminals will break them. They have channeled so much time, energy, and anger into undermining the value of the law. And now they claim we are powerless against it? That we must obey it?
None of this is new for our “Christian” nation. We have torn children from their families since our founding and used the Bible to justify it. Scripture was twisted to justify the horrors of slavery and the systemic terrorism of the Jim Crow era. Scripture was twisted to justify killing millions of native peoples to claim this nation as a “Christian” one, murdering millions made in the image of God just like us and then raising their children as though they’d been parentless. Scripture is used today to justify a criminal system that punishes people of color longer and harder for the same crimes committed by their richer and whiter brethren. Mercy and grace are reserved for the people it is easy for us to love, for those in our church, in our family, in our community. It’s rarely extended to those we don’t know personally, though Jesus extended it to all of us and commanded us to do the same.
The “Christian” nation of America has a long history of bloodshed, brutality, and hatred expressed in the name of the Lord. Dare to imagine that nation instead expressing His love, welcoming His people here with open arms, tending to their wounds and accepting that they might get some wounds themselves in the growing pangs of progress. The Jesus I was raised to believe in didn’t shy away from taking on love’s battle scars.
The Jesus I was raised to believe in came to set us free, not judge people for their actions without having heard their stories. He wouldn’t turn away the hurting or deem anyone unworthy of His compassion, of being part of His family.
The reality is that most of the people at our border are already part of that family. They are by and large Christians themselves, Christians who had to make the hard decision to move from their homelands for their own protection or for a better future. Oh, did you miss the photos of their confiscated rosaries, that symbol of sacred solace, taken from them upon reaching our borders?
Have you considered that maybe, maybe, American Christians might find themselves enriched by fellowshipping with our fellow believers, that we might flourish together, that this might be a family reunion itself? The party of Family Values is casting our own family from the door.
Why? It’s not because they believe immoral laws must be followed — we’ve already established that. And make no mistake that an immigration system that forces people to remain in dangerous situation for years is also immoral. It may be that the rule minders don’t recognize the cages of fear they’ve placed around themselves. Fears of bodily safety and rising crime, though studies have shown that immigrants are less likely than US citizens to commit them and our crime rates remain at historic lows. Fears of job loss, though immigrants have proven to be job creators, to help economies flourish. Fears that America might have to shift and change as it embraces those who suffer, as it lifts them up. Yes, that may be it, that fear of the other, fear that our way of life might be threatened, that we might have to change, that we might be inconvenienced.
Well, I have good news. God is not a god of fear of but of power, love, and self-control. Jesus came to deliver us from fear. As 1 John reads, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
Living out that radical love means leaving the comfortable places we’ve built for ourselves, whether physical or mental. It means sacrifice, it means making changes to our way of life…is that so much to ask when it literally might save the lives of others?
If your answer is yes, then I also have news for you. You would not be comfortable in a Christian nation. A Christian nation is one that loves, comforts, and rejoices with all God’s people without discrimination and with a servant’s heart. A Christian nation is one that knows Jesus meant it when He said, “Whomever will not carry the cross that is given to them when they follow me cannot be my follower.” Because that is what the Lord has done for us, and that is what he’d have us do for everyone, starting with the least of us.
Perhaps preserving your notion of America is more important to you than fulfilling that command. Then perhaps the nation you want is not a Christian one after all. Perhaps your allegiances are not ranked in the way you think they are, if you’d rather preserve a semblance of some earthly culture than live out the radical love Jesus has modelled for us. Perhaps your motivation for standing in the public square and yelling, “Unclean!” is not one of seeking holiness but of seeking something else, something that has blinded you from the reality of the Christian life after so many years of listening to only voices that echo your own from the empty walls of that abandoned square.
So you want a Christian nation? Try living like you’re in one. You may find it doesn’t suit you that comfortably after all.
