You Think You’re American? I Am More
My name is Nate Carden. Yes that’s English. My dad’s side of the family hails from England. We can trace our lineage back to 7 Carden brothers who left England in the early 1700s in search religious freedom and economic opportunity (but probably just slightly more so for economic opportunity). They landed in Charleston, South Carolina and spread throughout the Southeast of what is now the United States of America. My Mom’s side of the family descends from immigrant Norwegian, Bible loving, Lutheran farmers.
I’m talking like a fool here, God forgive me.
I’m the third of four children by parents who have been married for almost 50 years. My oldest brother is an F-16 pilot, my middle brother is a successful entrepreneur (and scratch golfer), my younger sister is a successful real estate agent and mother of three kids.
Our dog growing up was a mut in the way most Americans are muts —she was part black lab, part german shepherd, part who knows. We named her patty (short for patriot). The reason will become clear in a few paragraphs.
I’m from Tuscaloosa, Alabama — AKA “Title Town,” AKA “City of Champions” — home of the Crimson Tide, who holds the most national championships of any college football team, ever. A team who everyone hates because we win all the time (like America). Roll Tide.
And my home state…can you think of a more American state in the Union? Is there a state more God loving, gun loving and freedom loving than Alabama? We may not know the three branches of government, but we know the Constitution.. ok well, at least the first two amendments.
Look, we may not be the smartest state in the country, but who cares? We’re not the dumbest. As we say in Alabama, “thank God for Mississippi!”
My dad started (he would say he didn’t start it, you know, because he’s humble) a private Christian school in Tuscaloosa called American Christian Academy.
I went to ACA from kindergarten through 12th grade. Our colors are red, white, and blue and our mascot is a Patriot — like the New England Patriots (who often get compared to the Alabama Crimson Tide and America..all winners)
I played little league soccer as a kid but wasn’t very good at it. Whatever. I’m from Alabama, it wasn’t in the cards. There’s only one sport that males in Alabama are groomed to play.
To this day, soccer is still boring to me… but I’m warming up to it (like most Americans) especially if it’s the Olympics and we Americans can prove to the rest of the world that we’re better than them at everything, even the things we don’t like.
There is a point to me saying all this, bear with me.
I was recruited to play football at the United States Air Force Academy but I only played my freshman year. The world expanded for me after leaving Alabama and doing well in school became more important to me than becoming a college football star.
After the Air Force Academy, the Air Force sent me to grad school at Sciences Po in Paris, France for two years and after that hard tour of duty, stationed me at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.
I served for three years there as a hospital administrator at the hospital on base. Before completing my five year commitment to the military, I deployed to Afghanistan where I mentored Afghan Colonels on how to buy and stock medicine and medical equipment in the capital city of Kabul in support of regional hospitals around the country.
Basically, I spread freedom and democracy to people who need it most…
It’s embarrassing to admit, but there has always been a part of me that has thought this way. The more I get to know Christ however, the more holes I see in that narrative.
I used to base much of my identity in life on where I’m from and what I’ve done. Today though, I consider it as shit when compared to the greater value of getting to participate in God’s plan to redeem and reconcile the whole world. I thought I was an American of Americans, like St Paul thought he was a Hebrew of Hebrews, but really, I was a part of the problem.
I am willing, based on my commitment to Yeshua of Nazareth (The Jew, The Messiah, my King and God) to reconsider every aspect of the stories I’ve been told, by myself and others, about the glorious parts of my heritage and the positive impact I’ve had/am having in the world.
I will listen to my brother in Christ and fellow Alabamian, Bryan Stevenson, when he says that we, in America in general and Alabama in particular, have not told the truth, to ourselves or others, about the evil committed at the altars of Growth and Individual Freedom (white individual freedom that is).
I will listen to my brother in Christ, Martin Luther King Jr, who was imprisoned and wrote this letter from a jail less than an hour’s drive from my childhood home. I will agree with him when he says that “it is wrong to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.”
What King means is this, it is wrong to use abortion (a serious sin) as the means to preserve the gap between the wealthy and the poor. Historian John Fea rightly challenges us, “what if the Christians who want to reduce the number of abortions, supported funding health care for women, dealt with the systemic racism that creates poverty for women of color, and addressed the income gap between White people and people of color.”
The ends matter, but the means matter more.
Most importantly I will listen to people like the writer James Baldwin, who left Christianity because American Christians were unwilling to acknowledge their complicity in injustice. His point is well taken — if Christianity promises the reconciliation of all races and the Christian church is the most segregated organization in America, then Christianity is a sham.
So I guess this is where I’ve landed after 36 years of life in this world. I love this country. I have risked my life in the service of it. But if love of country ever gets in the way of the gospel of Christ, I will sacrifice America, every time.
If saving America means that people now want nothing to do with Christ, you can have my America. I’d rather just be a Christian.
